


Falling

by andchaos



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-08-07
Packaged: 2017-12-21 18:06:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/903258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andchaos/pseuds/andchaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after the season 8 finale, Castiel copes with his newfound humanity, Dean's anger, and Sam's slow recovery. While dealing with his confused, intensified feelings for his friend, Castiel both saves and condemns Sam in a way that may destroy the world in which he wants only to live peacefully.</p><p>Note: I don't own Supernatural or any of its characters. I pretty much just own the cat, and even its name is stolen.</p><p>Also, most of the events in this fic comes from various theories I've seen about season 9 and little spoilers released by the actors, whether or not they were serious when they said it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Walking

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter explains what happens in the immediate aftermath of The Great Fall of all the angels. It's pretty much like Lord of the Rings in that there's a lot of walking.

Falling took _forever._

          You know how they say that when you die, your whole life flashes before your eyes? It’s true. You’re storing away all of your memories from your past life so that you can remember bits and pieces of it in your next one, which is the cause of déjà vu and the reason that soulmates find each other—you’ve always been soulmates, from the beginning of time.

          Castiel was born at the beginning of time, so having his life replayed in his head took an infinite amount of lifetimes, and therefore, so did falling.

          When it was over, and he lay shaken and raw and _new_ on the forest floor, he didn’t open his eyes at first. He was afraid of the things he would see—and the things he _wouldn’t_ see. Where before there were reapers and angels and the faces of demons, now there would be nothing. Castiel felt terrified.

          Castiel felt small.

          He started out by flexing his fingers. Slowly, carefully, he moved onto his toes, and then the entirety of each extremity, before adventuring onto his limbs and finally, he moved to stretch his back.

          His eyes snapped open without his permission. In all the contemplating he’d managed to do during the eternity that was his fall from grace, he somehow hadn’t realized that he would be missing the most integral part of his existence— _his wings._

          But if he had learned anything from his two best friends—his two _brothers_ —it was how to repress emotions, so he stowed his touchy-feely, self-help yoga crap and got to his feet, feeling languid and heavy and off-balance and all-around _wrong_.

          He walked. And as he walked, he looked up at the sky, and imagined that these were all shooting stars that would grant his wishes.

          _Bring Anael safe passage._

_Bring Samael safe passage._

_Bring Tamriel safe passage._

_Bring Camael safe passage._

          He knew all their names. It was a very long walk.

 

Time moved in lapses and leaps of grief and anger and heavy metal.

          He knew that they had achieved something absolutely groundbreaking in discovering how to cure demons, in nearly shutting the Gates of Hell forever, in significantly weakening the King of Hell himself—but his head was a constant thrum of _not enough, not enough, not enough_ as Sam coughed weakly from the backseat and the family of his best friend rained down on all sides. Hell was open. Crowley was alive. They hadn’t achieved anything.

          He didn’t know where else to go—who can cure a broken man with two trials and Satan’s plan running through his veins?—so he just drove in the general direction of the bunker, not that they were anywhere close by it. He hoped Kevin had made it inside safely; a familiar face and the smallest piece of good news would feel like home right now, especially after the exceptionally shitty day he had just experienced.

          So he drove. Six hours lay between him and getting Sam some proper medical care. He drove, and he didn’t eat, and he didn’t sleep, and he didn’t pull over to stretch his legs or check the engine or drink a beer. He screamed Metallica at the window, but Sammy had stopped stirring four hours ago, so it wasn’t nearly enough to drown out the constant screaming in his head. It was a very long drive.

 

Castiel found the road fairly quickly, as he had dropped into a copse of trees so close to civilization that a few minutes’ walk led him within hearing distance of passing cars. He knew he should probably just hitchhike—he may not have any angel mojo left but he still possessed the shiny angel blade that, though not designed for the species, would nevertheless pin any wayward human to the back of the seat if he really wanted—but he knew he had a lot of penance to do, and he didn’t want Dean’s constant interruptions of _Are you okay?_ and _I made another pie. You gotta eat something, man_ so he thought it best to do such intensive thinking on the way back to the bunker, before Dean could start in on his mother hen routine.

          He knew that God—or Chuck, or whatever—had long since abandoned him. He knew that there probably wasn’t even anyone up there to accept his prayers anymore. Still, he had to seek forgiveness from _someone_ , so he prayed to himself, partly because he did need to forgive himself, and partly because nobody else was about to do so anytime soon. Even if someone _wanted_ to send thoughts his way, he hadn’t heard any thoughts but his own since Dean had cried out “Castiel!” (a word that had been resonating in the core of his being ever since). Between this knowledge, and the uncomfortable presence of wind between his empty shoulder blades, he trudged down the side of the road with a frown and a pout and a knife. He hated feeling so exposed, so bare, so readily overtaken and overwhelmed. How did humans handle this whole vulnerability thing?

          He didn’t even know where had fallen. He could have been a mile from the bunker and heading in the completely wrong direction. He could have been in Europe. He just chose a direction and walked until morning, an hour or two after his last sibling had crashed down, when the sun spilled light he didn’t deserve across a dilapidated city and, tear tracks still glistening under his now-dry eyes, he decided to finally ask his location.

          He found a plump, cheerful woman inside of the first establishment he encountered—a bakery, as it transpired, and he approached the counter to question the owner. He opened his mouth, but his stomach rumbled just then, and he peered down at it in confusion, head gently tilted.

          “Hungry, dear?” asked the pleasant woman, clapping her hands together. “What can I do you for this lovely morning?”

          Castiel looked up at her again, a question half-formed on his lips, when a memory came crashing back to him, a memory from his former self. He _did_ know what his body supplicated; years ago, on the hunt for Famine, Jimmy had briefly awoken, enough that Cas had had to comply with copious quantities of White Castle.

          He was _hungry_. Vaguely annoyed with the feeling, but overall pleased that he had solved this first mystery of his new form, he slid his gaze back to the woman still beaming at him and tried to remember the people skills that Dean had once tried to implant.

          “What is your most popular baked good?” he ventured, attempting a charming smile but looking more like he was cringing at a sore tooth.

          The woman’s smile didn’t even falter; he decided that he liked her. Though he could no longer investigate her soul, he felt an odd certainty in her kindness and genuine compassion. Nevertheless, he didn’t exactly appreciate his newfound inability to ascertain his suspicions.

          “We serve the best ham-and-egg sandwiches in the county, dear!” chirped the amicable woman. “And we squeeze our own orange juice each morning!”

          Castiel nodded jerkily. “That should be fine. I have money,” he added as an afterthought, and produced the remainder of the crumbled bills that he had never removed from his trenchcoat after his expedition to restock the bunker, what seemed like a decade ago.

          “And I’ve got the food, sweetie,” the woman winked, laughed, and bustled away to order the chefs to start on his breakfast.

          Castiel stared after her for a minute before something shoved him from behind. He caught himself before hitting the counter and whipped around, prepared for an ill-advised fight, but the tall man behind him just hissed, “ _Move_ , you idiot!” so he shuffled off the side, struggling to remind himself that just because every altercation he’d ever seen Sam and Dean fall into ended with someone bleeding didn’t mean that normal humans fist-fought over every disagreement.

          He drifted off to a table nearby so that he could be ready to leave as soon as his food arrived. His feet were beginning to ache and he hadn’t stopped to sleep the previous night, but he really needed to find his friends—his _family_ , as they constantly reminded him.

          The woman called his number and he managed a better smile this time as he collected his food, and even remembered to ask where he was.

          “Follett, Texas,” she replied with a bright smile, and he thanked her before walking out the door, breakfast in hand and determination flaring in his chest.

 

When he finally got to the bunker, Dean dragged his long-unconscious little brother from the backseat where he’d been lying down. Sam still couldn't walk, and Dean bit down the ever-rising panic in favor of forcing him into the Batcave.

          Kevin wasn’t even sleeping. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to accidentally take one of their beds, or maybe it was something between his vicious exploring and nervous coffee-drinking habit, but he had stayed up waiting for someone to come by. When Dean finally wrestled Sam through the entrance, Kevin sprang up from behind Sam’s laptop and helped Dean carry the much larger man down a hallway and into what was evidently the younger Winchester’s room. With a grunt, they all but threw Sam onto the bed, and then quickly exited.

          Dean had barely greeted the prophet when he walked in, and he still didn’t waste breath or time on the genius while he busily gathered ice packs, warm cloths, a handful of generic sick-person food, bandages, and a bottle of whiskey. He returned quickly to Sam’s room, laying the towel-wrapped ice on the man’s burning forehead, rewrapped the bandages on his arms and hands, and leaned back in a chair, unscrewing the bottle and taking a long draft.

          He looked up to find Kevin had at some point joined him, looking concerned but wary, as though fearful that Dean would kick him out of the room. Instead, the hunter just sighed and muttered, “We’ll take him to the hospital in the morning if he doesn’t get any better. I can’t bring him in like this.”

          Kevin just nodded. Of course, the hospital would take Sam in a heartbeat, but Dean couldn’t risk getting them both arrested. Their records may have been wiped clean, but the general public would probably recognize them as the two boys who had gone on a murder spree last year. And jailed Sam would be dead Sam. The stupid police would probably question him as soon as he regained consciousness, which would only exhaust him further. Besides, the Winchesters never went to hospitals for themselves if possible. The less of a paper trail they left, the less recognizable they would be. That was crucial, especially since they’d decided to make the bunker a kind of home for the time being.

          “You can sleep on the room down the hall, Kevin. Third door on your right past the kitchen.” Dean sighed this sentence out a minute or two later, when the ex-AP student still hadn’t moved.

          The underlying message was clear: _Cas gets the good room next door._

 

At first, Castiel ignored his misgivings about getting into cars with strangers. He was a relatively tall man—not compared to Sam, maybe, but he was over six foot—and it was early daylight, so how much trouble could he really attract?

          The question turned out not to be how much he could _attract_ but how much he could _start_. In retrospect, a bus full of old women with their kittens and knitting tools was probably safe and easy, but Castiel had a knack for desperately ruining everything that required social interaction.

          When he boarded the bus—the driver seeming less than pleased to pick up what looked like a dirty vagrant, but the passengers immediately taking to his kind demeanor and classy albeit ruffled appearance—he smiled as best as he could and looked at the driver, waiting for instructions.

          _“Well_?”the man snapped impatiently. “Where to?”

          Nonplussed for a moment, Castiel looked around like he usually did right before Dean jumped in with all the right answers. Obviously, no one was coming to save him this time, so he finally swung his head back toward the driver and said, “Lebanon, Kansas, please.”

          The driver grunted—that probably wasn’t anywhere near his original destination—but the ladies didn’t seem remotely upset, only fascinated, so Cas ignored the rude man up front and stumbled into a seat a few rows back.

          A woman leaned over to him a few minutes after the bus had resumed its bumpy path over the sandy gravel that the road had become a few miles back.

          “What’s in Kansas that’s so important you had to hijack a bus of old sweethearts, huh, dear?” inquired a kind-faced old woman, specs low on her nose and connected to a chain that ran back into her frizzy grey hair. She smiled at him, obviously joking, but Castiel just furrowed his brow and said,

          “I didn’t hijack this bus, the driver let me on.”

          The woman laughed, and a few of her fellows turned toward them and leaned in closer.

          “My best—my family is in Kansas,” Castiel said carefully. “I…made a grave mistake recently, refusing to trust them even though they took me in when my old home cast me out. My old family…they’re angels, but they don’t forgive easily, despite that being God’s initial word.”

          “So your new family,” the same woman said slowly, not as though she disbelieved him, just like she was puzzling out the cryptic pieces, “Are they your…friends?”

          “They are my family,” Castiel intoned, inclining his head. Dean had said so himself, and they _were_ family, where it mattered.

          “I see,” a new woman spoke up, across the aisle from him. Castiel turned his head to look at her. “And this new family…is one of them your wife?”

          “It’s just Sam and Dean,” said Castiel, tilting his head in confusion.

          The women all exchanged glances and tittered, though Castiel couldn’t see what was so amusing.

          “Sam and Dean, hmmm?” one of them asked, watching him with obvious glee engraved in her visage.

          “Yes.” The word came out low and serious, as did most things Castiel said. “Sam sickens, but they have both been very…helpful to me, these last four years. I intend to heal him, because he is family.”

          The woman all grinned at each other again. A faint line of annoyance appeared between his eyebrows.

          “So, this Sam character…” the first woman began, “Is he…you’re very close to him, yes?”

          “Well…Dean and I do share a more profound bond,” Castiel began carefully, the old nagging feeling that he was missing something important starting up in his stomach. “But yes, Sam is very much my brother.”

          The women grinned at him, though the smiles were beginning to look more like smirks.

          “So it’s Dean then?” one of them said in a rush.

          “What’s Dean?” he asked gruffly, his vexation rising.

          “Do you two boys…you know, sit around, order pizza, watch a movie?” prodded another.

          He squinted in mixed confusion and irritation, remembering one night in a safehouse, guarding Anna from angels and demons alike, and said gruffly,

          “Dean said we’re not supposed to talk about it.”

          The ladies collapsed into fits of laughter.

          “Your old family might be sweet, honey,” one of them said, finally sobering up and patting him clumsily on the cheek, “But you should keep this Dean character.”

Cas just tilted his head again. Since when had he ever said his old family was sweet?

 

 

Sam was marginally better in the morning.

          Dean knew the hospital wouldn’t be any good anyway; mortal doctors would have no idea how to heal these wounds, laced as they were with magic. He therefore had no choice but to trust that his amateur doctoring skills would suffice and went to grab more rags and another bottle of whiskey.

          When he returned, Sam was muttering in his sleep. Dean leaned back against the doorframe slightly as waves of relief crashed over him at this small sign of life. He allowed himself a few seconds before he rushed over to remove the towel currently covering his brother’s forehead and quickly replaced it with a colder one, changed his arm bandages _again_ , frowned slightly at his inability to properly remedy this deep-rooted magic-induced malady, wished desperately for the millionth time that Cas would show up wielding great angelic powers and fix Sam, and went to go draw up a bath of ice.

          When the large bathtub (seriously, did the Men of Letters all bathe _together_ or something?) was full of icy water, Dean went into the kitchen to grab some actual ice to throw in as well, only to discover Kevin making breakfast.

          The smaller man glanced over his shoulder and grinned briefly at the sight of the eldest Winchester. The smile was obviously forced, but Dean appreciated the gesture nevertheless.

          “Whatcha makin’ there, kiddo?” he asked, leaning over to scout the freezer.

          “Bacon, hash browns, and pancakes,” the other replied. “You don’t have any music, do you?”

          “What are you, nuts?” said Dean, somewhat excitedly, as he threw the ice he’d discovered into a bag. He dropped his spoils on the counter and went over to the record player in the next room, visibly happier at the prospect of good tunes and this small moment of domesticity, no matter how false the picture and how wrecked the situation underneath the pleasant early-morning façade. “What can I do you for?”

          “Whatever you’ve got,” said Kevin with a small laugh. Honestly, he hadn’t heard really decent music in months—any music, really, since becoming a prophet. The noise had distracted him from his translation, and anyway, he’d been fearful of being too loud in his hideaway and attracting attention, demon or human.

          Dean threw on a Pink Floyd record and looked over his shoulder at the poor homeless boy whose life they had effectively ruined just by meeting him—and smiled.

          Kevin, who preferred violin solos that he could do SAT practice sheets to, just shook head with a little smirk and turned back to his cooking. Dean quirked his eyebrows and did that stupid grin he always does, threw the bags of ice over his shoulder, and returned to Sam’s room.

          Sam still wasn’t conscious after two soaks in the bathtub, but Dean tried desperately not to panic. He looked down at his little brother with a furrowed brow, wondering what else he could do, how else he could help with his limited resources and knowledge. _God damn it, Cas,_ he thought angrily, knowing full well that nobody could hear him, _where the hell are you?_

 

Castiel rode the bus all the way to a bus stop just outside of Harper, Oklahoma, at which point the driver had grown tired of his constipated-looking face and the way he kept clutching his jacket like he had a weapon stored in it somewhere, and kicked him out. The old women all got teary and begged him to stay, because he’d evidently brightened the last hour of their lives, but he had no choice. He exited, clumsy and heavy-footed, clutching a cat they had insisted he keep, and watched the bus drive away in that detached fashion of his. He supposed he’d have to walk, though he had about three days’ travel ahead of him.

          He was just crossing the border into Kansas, fingers scratching idly through the cat’s hair, when a name came out of the jumbled thoughts with which he’d been distracting himself. He looked down at the kitten curiously, considering, and it watched him right back with eyes the exact same shade of startling blue.

          “Adam,” he declared, probing the animal with his too-human eyes and thinking that Dean would be happy to have his brother back, since Castiel could no longer save the actual boy. The Winchesters would just have to make do with a kitten that shared the boy’s eyes.

          As he walked, he mostly prayed—not a real prayer to anyone, since his fellows were all dead or cast out and his Father had been missing for years, but a string of words that passed as penance and shoddily repaired his conscience enough that he could breathe without wanting to kill himself. Sometimes, wondering idly if Metatron had escaped The Great Fall, he prayed to his brother, too, heated diatribes that included some of Dean’s favorite curse words, monologues painted with shades of anger that he had watched Sam turn inwards upon himself more times than even an ex-angel could count. He took all the pain, frustration, and rage that he and his friends had ever experienced and directed this wordless stream of pure negativity at the destroyer, and sole ruler, of Heaven.

          He also thought of the things he would have to do now that he was human, and the things that he wanted to do. He would have to eat, and use the bathroom, and bathe, and sleep, and do laundry. Dean would probably make him learn how to swim and drive and shoot a gun, and obviously he’d try and get him to have sex again because now that Cas’s death was a very real possibility, Dean was likely to redouble his efforts to ascertain that the fallen angel didn’t die a virgin. He would probably have to get an anti-possession tattoo as well. Castiel wondered if he could live off cheeseburgers and whether or not he liked candy as much as Gabriel.

          He stopped by a few more convenience stores as he walked, sometimes to use a restroom (that was something of a fiasco, and he left quietly and immediately and resolved not to try again until he was back at the bunker) and sometimes to find the answers to these questions. He discovered his penchant for red vines and that they didn’t fill him up, but a burger and fries did, and those tasted even better than when Famine had kickstarted Jimmy Novak’s appetite.

          Castiel hadn’t thought about Jimmy in awhile, actually, but he did now. As he exited the small diner where he had purchased lunch, now freshly out of money and with aching feet (and _that_ was a new sensation he didn’t care for), he pondered the fate of the poor devout father and husband. He couldn’t feel Jimmy rattling around inside of him anymore, about that he was positive. Jimmy’s soul must have finally been released unto Heaven when Castiel fell, because he was the only one occupying the vessel, he could tell.

          He walked and ate red vines and petted Adam and prayed and walked.

 

 

Sam murmured for three days.

          Dean checked in on him once every hour, but nothing ever changed. He tried listening in on his brother’s ramblings, but they didn’t appear to be anything’s particularly sensible. Sam talked about Stanford, vampires, Purgatory, and Hell—he even mentioned Jess once or twice, to Dean’s consternation—but he obviously wasn’t coherent. Dean spent the intervening time working on his baby, drinking beer with Kevin, occasionally checking in on Crowley (who they had chained in the dungeon), and researching jobs in the area. He even came up with a few potential cases, but, unable to bring himself to leave the bunker when Sam was in danger, he called on Garth to bring in some other hunters. A few even stopped by, old friends of his or John’s, but none of them stayed for more than a few hours.

          Kevin, meanwhile, enjoyed his hiatus from translation. He sat on the couch and played the video game system that Sam had hooked up before The Great Fall, while Dean sat next to him and researched ways to open the Gates of Heaven again. Not that the internet had an overabundance of information on what to do when you accidentally cast out God’s winged helpers, leaving only a giant bibliophilic dick and a host of fairly useless dead people.

And with every passing second, he hoped to hell that Cas was still alive.

         

Castiel felt dead inside.

          He knew that he should just be glad that he wasn’t actually; Metatron could have easily killed him after taking his Grace, but he supposed the angel had felt that he owed him a debt of some sort. After all, Castiel _had_ helped him. Of course, this was the exact reason that he felt empty to his absolute core.

          He walked for three days, refusing to sleep and too broke to eat, and he occasionally detoured into the forest to let Adam catch a squirrel or a bird, or else let him forage. People tended to give Castiel disgusted looks when they saw the literal trash that he fed his cat, but he had no other choice.

          And as he walked, the same few thoughts replayed in his head:

          _I’m sorry, brethren._

_Bite me, Metatron._

_Save me, Dean. And I’ll save you._

 

He walked for three days until he found the bunker.


	2. Waiting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cas goes on his first hunt as a human, screws up a few more times, and comes to an agreement with Dean.

When Castiel first came across the Men of Letters’ hideout, he stood perfectly still and just stared at it for about ten minutes. He had spent so long wandering around Lebanon, Kansas looking for the place that he did not immediately go in. He wanted to admire, to fully appreciate his victory. He knew that his world would dissolve into chaos the minute he set foot inside.

          Eventually, with a deep breath and a slight retreat into his overlarge coat, he walked steadily toward the building, down the steps, and into Team Free Will’s hideaway.

          At first, nobody noticed that Castiel had returned. Kevin was dozing lightly on the couch, a book trapped between his fingers but laying across his chest like it had fallen there after he closed his eyes, and neither of the Winchesters were anywhere in immediate sight. Castiel had vague memories of the hideout from his brief stay here, what he supposed had been about a week ago, but he found with frustration that his human mind was less apt to memorization, and he couldn’t navigate the rooms as well as he’d hoped. Between closing Heaven (or what he _thought_ had been closing Heaven), losing his Grace, and walking for days, he hadn’t spared much thought for the layout of the bunker.

          Now that they were inside, Castiel loosened his hold on Adam, and the cat jumped gratefully onto the floor, pleased to stretch his legs. After Castiel unhooked his leash, the tiny kitten pranced gleefully out of the room, off to roam the building in a way that Castiel was vaguely afraid to. He knew that his friends—his family—would be less than happy with him at the current moment, and, though anxious to see them again, he wasn’t particularly looking forward to the inevitable blast wave.

          Of course, he didn’t have to work up the courage—Adam did it for him. The cat trotted through the bunker, not particularly bothered that he had left his owner behind in the living room, and maneuvered between stacks of paper, bookshelves, furniture, and automatic weapons as he wended his way through the rooms. He found a hallway with a nice plush rug and traveled down that way, discovering that most of the doors were closed except for two at the very end of the hall. He poked his head into the first one, but it was empty—the bed was set up as though it was waiting for someone and the doors to the wardrobe were open as though hoping somebody would suddenly fill it in the night—but nobody had lived inside, that much was clear. Flicking his tail with vague disdain, Adam wandered back out of the room and turned into the one next door instead. This one had been lived in to the point of absurdity; clothes, cups, plates, old rags, and books were strewn haphazardly about the place, and two people were inside. One lay in the bed, shivering and muttering, and the other sat on a chair leaning over the first, his head bowed on the edge of the bed and muttering what sounded like a mix of profanity and prayer to someone whose name he vaguely recognized. When neither of them reacted to his appearance, Adam sat back on his haunches and meowed loudly.

          Dean startled up at the disturbance to his near-silent pleas to Castiel. He looked around the room, and jumped up from his chair when something brushed his leg, automatically reaching for his gun and preparing to shoot underneath the bed—

          He looked down and immediately lowered his weapon, the panic still evident on his face and in his frozen position, but his mind had relaxed. It was just a cat.

          “I almost had a _heart attack_ ,” grunted Dean, stepping over the animal and beckoning for it to follow him. It did, straight away, as he strode out of the room and down the hall, with full intentions of moving the stray outside. He didn’t know what kind of diseases it had, and anyway, he couldn’t focus on healing a cat when he was floundering trying to fix his own brother.

          He shoved the gun into the back of jeans as he turned the corner, simultaneously glancing over his shoulder to make sure that the little orange kitten was still following him.

          “Sorry, pal,” he muttered as he turned back around, “I can’t take care of—”

          He froze in the middle of the doorway. The cat bumped gently into the back of his legs and mewled, glaring up at the unresponsive man, and started violently rubbing himself on the hunter’s legs when he still elicited no reaction.

          “Hello, Dean,” said Castiel with a small nod, worry evident even on his relatively stoic face; Dean knew that visage too well not to recognize the faint creases on his forehead and the way the trenchcoat seemed even more overlarge than usual as its wearer shrunk into it as far as possible.

          He unfroze as soon as he heard those two, tiny, familiar words.

          “Cas, you dumb son of a bitch,” he muttered, taking several large strides forward and pulling his friend into a deep embrace. It was Purgatory all over again; Dean, overwhelmed and caught between intense relief and faint frustration, buried his head into Castiel’s collarbone and muttered more profanities into his ear, until he pulled back, both hands still on Castiel’s shoulders.

          “You made it,” said Dean, his tone close to marvel. “So you’re a fallen angel now?” He clapped Castiel roughly on his shoulder as he said it, as though this would soften the blow of those words.

          Castiel cringed. He was not as unbreakable as he had been. “Dean—” But he didn’t know how to even begin to explain.

          “Cas?” asked Dean, worriedly now, dropping his arms and taking a step back. He was still a little too far into Castiel’s personal space, not that Cas had any better grasp on that concept that he had before, so he didn’t really mind.

          “I’m—I’m not—”

          “What is it?” He was impatient now, but the anxiety was still clear.

          “I’m not a fallen angel, Dean.” He said this completely flatly, as though retreating into his usual shell would make hearing the news aloud for the first time sting less. “I’m not like Anna, I’m not like my family in Heaven. They _fell_ , like Lucifer did.” He paused, closed his eyes. “My Grace was stolen from me, Dean, and used for unspeakable evil. Metatron _closed the Gates_. He cast out the angels.” He inhaled deeply. “I’m human, Dean.”

          He still didn’t open his eyes, but he could imagine Dean’s horrified expression just fine. Dean was all wide, pitying, disbelieving eyes and open-mouthed, and Castiel _knew_ that he would lose this beautiful almost-numbness if he looked at his best friend’s face right now.

          After a minute or so, Dean regained control of himself like a good little soldier. He hugged Castiel briefly again, muttered “you dumb son a bitch” again, and turned away.

          “I have to help Sam,” he muttered, because no matter how relieved he was that Castiel had made it back safe, and no matter how sorry he felt for his poor mortal friend, he nevertheless had a brother to care for. Besides, Castiel’s various misfortunes did nothing to lessen Dean’s anger that had not yet abated, despite Cas’s various attempts at making amends (the grocery shopping had been much appreciated).

          “Your room’s the open door,” he added without ever turning around.

          As Dean walked away, Castiel stood in there in the living room beside the still-sleeping Kevin Tran, his eyes trained on Dean’s retreating back, and let some of his misery in.

 

Dean wasn’t speaking to Castiel nowadays.

          Nevertheless, Castiel had a sneaking suspicion that Dean was secretly relieved at having his friend back again—and for good this time. He saw it in the extra coffee left in the pot in the morning, since Kevin was off the stuff and Sam only ever woke up for a few minutes at a time, two or three times a day. He saw it in the empty tins scattered over the counter, tins that used to hold pie that Castiel had bought. He saw it in the way that the only beer that ever went missing was from the packs that Cas purchased, while the six-pack Dean had procured before Cas’s return stayed firmly untouched beside them. He saw it in little gestures that were the only communication he got anymore.

          And still, he refused to examine his feelings. He knew that his stubborn stone-cold attitude would eventually crumble, but he had learned from the best how to bury his deep-seated emotional scarring. So he drank scotch (he _really_ liked scotch) while he watched Kevin play wholesome children’s video games and he ate cheeseburgers while he watched Dean heal.

          Dean was so different now, Castiel found the recovery a little startling. He drank less—the beer was still disappearing pretty fast, but part of that was Castiel’s doing—and Cas was pretty much the only one putting away the hard liquor anymore. Dean didn’t sleep in his clothes anymore, either, as though some of his paranoia from living through Hell _and_ Purgatory was disappearing, and Castiel smiled a little every time he saw Dean walking around the bunker in his robe.

          Dean, meanwhile, was steadfastly ignoring Cas to his face. He refused to look at him, especially when he could feel Cas’s pointed stares, though of course sometimes he couldn’t help himself. He would glance up when he knew Castiel was absorbed in his conversation with Kevin, and sometimes flat-out stared when he knew that Castiel was busy trying to learn a video game or cooking dinner for the three conscious men. He noticed how drawn and haggard Castiel looked, knew how much being human must be taking a toll on him, but without Sam to talk some sense into him, he remained stubbornly distant from the suffering ex-angel.

          One day, he came across Castiel in his room. Dean had been going to check on Sam, but Castiel’s door was ajar, and he couldn’t help looking in.

          Castiel was sleeping, albeit uneasily, as though he hadn’t quite figured out how to do it properly yet. Like a newborn, he kept crying out viciously and flailing so much that half the bed no longer had sheets.

          Before he could stop himself, Dean pushed open the door and walked over to Cas’s bedside. Maybe he had spent too long in this very position in Sam’s room, but it felt natural to pull over a chair and lay a hand on Castiel’s profusely sweating forehead. He leaned in fairly close and, after nearly a week of silence, whispered,

          “It’s okay, Cas. It’s gonna be just fine. I’ll watch over you.” He heard, too late, how he echoed the mantra Castiel had repeated, night after night, until every bed Dean slept in had a chair permanently facing it.

          Oddly enough, Castiel relaxed a little. Before he knew was he was doing, Dean started ruffling his hair, slowly though, soothingly, because it seemed to calm Castiel down further. He sat like that for so long that he lost track of time, happy to be able to heal _someone_ , and he got so lost in thought and worry that he didn’t notice when Castiel’s eyes cracked open.

          “Dean?” he croaked, his tone both relieved and bewildered.

          Dean jumped up and withdrew his hand instantly. “Just sleep, Cas,” he said gruffly, and strode immediately from the room. Castiel closed his eyes obligingly, and he was never quite sure if that was a dream or not.

 

Castiel remembered seeing an advertisement once that told him a good way to apologize.

          “And these will make Dean stop being angry with me?” he asked the cashier solemnly.

          “I don’t know about your Dean, honey,” the blonde girl behind the counter said, obviously bored and popping her gum incessantly, “But it’d work on me.”

          “This is perfect, then,” he said, remembering to lie (“When humans want something…really, really bad…we lie,” Dean’s voice echoed in his head) because he really wanted this purchase even though he wasn’t sure that Dean’s preferences would match up with a teenage girl’s, “Thank you very much.”

          “Have a great day,” she said, smiling a worse fake smile than even Cas’s false grin. He left the store feeling fairly content.

          “Cas…what the hell is this?”

          It was the first time Dean had spoken to him since that night that may not have really happened, so Castiel was already counting this as a minor victory, despite the warning in Dean’s tone.

          “They’re roses, Dean,” he said patiently. “Humans exchange flowers when they are fighting, and then they’re no longer mad at each other. The television said so.”

          Dean scrubbed his hands over his face viciously. “Cas, you don’t give flowers to other _men_! This isn’t a goddamned chick flick!”

          He regretted these harsh words slightly when Castiel tilted his head in hurt and confusion.

          “I…I thought you would like them, Dean. I’m sorry.”

          Dean shook his head wearily. “Thanks, I guess.” His arm made a weird convulsive movement as though he wanted to clap Cas on the shoulder but thought better of it at the last second.

          “Come on, man,” he finally said, breathing out noisily and turning around, but not in such a way that Castiel was shut out as he had been for the past week and a half. “Gotta put those in water if you want them to live.”

 

After the bouquet incident, Dean occasionally exchanged words with Castiel, but still wasn’t engaging in full-blown conversations. He acted as though he wanted to ascertain that Castiel was behaving normally, but still wasn’t prepared to fully forgive him for the mistakes he had made as an angel.

          Castiel, meanwhile, had reverted back to a slightly more depressed version of his old self. He had by no means forgotten his mistakes, but he had forgiven himself for most of them and recognized that a self-pitying crybaby was fairly useless. At the risk of turning back into a “baby in a trenchcoat,” he kept his angst about his humanity to a minimum and threw himself into hunting as best as he could without any experience or training. Mostly, Dean made him stay at home and do research until he’d had more instruction, but as Dean was simultaneously refusing to teach him any useful skills, Castiel was looking at nothing but computer screens and textbook pages for the foreseeable future.

          “Dean,” he sighed one day, shutting _Best Bets to Beat Beasts_ with a very loud _thump_ , “I want to come on this hunt with you.”

          “No,” answered Dean, almost successfully masking his rumbling anger with indifference.

          “Dean,” said Cas lowly, his voice near growling. “Contrary to popular belief, I am _not_ a child. I can’t sit here watching _Star Wars_ again. I won’t.”

          “You know what, Cas?” Dean said loudly, straightening up and glaring at him. “I don’t know where your recent enthusiasm for hunting came from, but you can shove it straight up your ass. It’s not wanted. I don’t need anyone’s help, and I especially don’t need _your_ help.” He turned away, continued throwing guns into his bag with deliberate slowness but renewed force. “You’d just get in the way.”

          Cas looked down, stung but frustrated. “Dean—”

          “I said no,” he grunted.

          Fed up with his attitude, Castiel strode forward and planted himself firmly between Dean and the weapons he was trying to pack. Dean instantly stood up straight, as though he were in some way a stranger to Cas’s proximity, closing his eyes and breathing heavily through his nose.

          _“Cas—”_

          “This is _not_ your decision, Dean,” he growled, and Dean’s eyes snapped open. “I may have lost my Grace, but I’m _not_ useless. I can help.”

          “Cas—”

          “Dean, I’m coming.”

          He shook his head, but not like he was disagreeing. He shoved his way past Cas, hiding his mixed surprise and dismay that he could now, and started throwing knives into the bag with even more vigor than before.

          “Just don’t get in the way,” he warned, looking Castiel directly in the eyes for a split second before marching away.

          Despite the argument that had just passed and the danger that awaited him, little flutters of elation, newly powerful and potent, exploded in Castiel’s stomach.

 

Dean stomped all the way to Impala and slammed the door, well aware that he was dangerously close to throwing a tantrum. Castiel just wasn’t _ready_ for a hunt, he was probably going to get himself killed, and it would be all Dean’s fault.

          “You know,” he muttered when Castiel clamored into the passenger seat minutes later, staring openly at Dean’s silhouette while he glared just as intently at the windshield, “Maybe this isn’t the best idea…”

          “Just drive, Dean.” He didn’t have to look at his friend to notice the stony resolution that was surely just as evident on his face as it was in his voice.

          At least Castiel had chosen to accompany him on a fairly simple job; Dean could easily take down these sons of bitches himself, so it was really an ideal hunt for Castiel’s first time. Of course, Dean wished that Cas had more training—he may have picked up a few tricks as an angel, but he had no idea how different fighting would be without his powers as an advantage and a crutch—but as his lack of experience was pretty much all Dean’s fault, he merely grunted and shifted the Impala into drive.

          From the information he had gleaned, a pair of twins had been beaten to death by an abusive father back in the sixties; he had been viciously hitting one of them when the other stepped in to defend his brother, and they had both died. They had come back as seriously pissed off ghosts, killing their father and step-mother, as well as anyone else who had bothered to inhabit their old house in the years after their deaths.

          When they pulled up to the old house, Castiel moved to get out of the car immediately, but Dean grabbed his shoulder and forced him back into the seat.

          “Dean,” he sighed, clearly ready for another fight, but Dean just reached over into the backseat—ignoring the gasp Castiel tried to swallow and the way he held his breath when he moved too close—and grabbed the gun on the floor of the second row.

          “You know how to shoot a ’45?” he asked, staring steadily at him.

          “I remember,” Cas affirmed with a nod, reaching out for the weapon.

          “Good.” He handed over the gun and got out of the car. “It’s filled with rock salt, so just stay in the salt circle and shoot when you see something that isn’t me.”

          He reached into the trunk, shouldered the duffle bag stuffed with various weapons, looked over at the man now curiously turning over the gun in his hands, insufflated exasperatedly, and said, “Let’s go.”

          The house appeared at first to be abandoned, which wasn’t out of the ordinary. He knew the ghosts were there, as the front door slammed shut and locked the minute they were both over the threshold.

          “We’ll make base in the kitchen,” said Dean, tightening his grip on his double-barrel and looking around carefully, his face set in his usual angry scowl.

          “Why?” asked Castiel, squinting curiously but nevertheless following him into the other room.

          “They’ll have extra salt if we run out.”

          He directed Castiel back into a windowless corner between a cabinet and the wall and drew a line of salt about six inches in front of his feet.

          “Stay here,” he commanded fiercely, and for once Castiel accepted this without question, shifting his grip on his gun.

          Dean turned around to move into the other room at the exact time that one of the spirits materialized in front of him. He was no more than fifteen years old, dried blood obscuring one of his ears, and smirking horribly. Dean didn’t even have time to lift his gun when the spirit flicked the kitchen table at him, smashing him against the wall.

          “Cas—” he moaned from the floor, clutching his stomach and trying to lift his gun. His vision was blurring, but he was ace at knowing where to shoot when he couldn’t see very well, and the ghost disappeared with a satisfying explosion of dust.

          “Their granddad said that the step-mother kept a lock of their hair in the living room,” Dean near-shouted, jumping to his feet. “I’ll get that—you stay here!”

          Castiel nodded, anxiety plain on his face, and Dean could tell that he hadn’t known just how much he relied on his angelic powers until he no longer had them to utilize.

          “Okay, but Dean—be careful,” he said seriously.

          Dean turned away. “We don’t have time for that!” he yelled, running out of the kitchen.

          He found the hair fairly quickly; it was just inside the front cover of the bible on the end table. He fumbled open the book as his other hand reached into his jacket pocket for his lighter, and Castiel shouted out _“Dean!”_ from the other room as he desperately flicked at the Zippo. He glanced, panicked and uneasy, at the door leading into the kitchen as the hair finally caught fire. A few gunshots rang out every now and then, but the hair burned up fairly quickly, and he collapsed back onto the floor in relief, just as Castiel called out, “ _DEAN!”_ even more urgently than before.

          Perplexed and dread-filled, he shot to his feet, flustered, and darted back into the kitchen.

          Castiel lay panting on the floor, the salt circle broken, blood trickling from his hairline. He was clutching his side with one hand and his leg with the other.

          “What happened, Cas? Cas?” Dean asked frantically, all but crumpling at Castiel’s feet in his haste to help.

          “He—ah—I believe h-he got me,” he groaned, leaning back and hitting his head on the cabinet. He moaned lowly again. “Though not as badly as I got him,” he added with some satisfaction. Castiel may be newly human now, but he still knew how to fight; he’d been doing it for centuries.

          “Cas?” Dean repeated somewhat hysterically. “Cas, you gotta tell me what’s wrong here.”

          “Just…get me back to the bunker.” His face was set and he didn’t look prepared to change his mind, so Dean lifted him to his feet as best as he could, slung Castiel’s arm over his own shoulder, and began the long, painful shuffle back to the car.

 

Dean’s anger melted considerably as he tended Castiel’s wounds. They turned out to be minor by general Winchester standards—the spirit had impaled a kitchen knife shallowly into his side and broken his leg by dropping the microwave on it—but Dean nevertheless reverted to the roles of caretaker and guardian that he had assumed all his life in the face of someone else’s distress. He spent the remainder of the day flitting between Cas’s room and Sam’s, tending them in equal measure. Kevin stopped by to chat with Castiel every now and then, but he mainly spent the day with Sam, at Dean’s insistence.

          To make up for the prophet’s absence, the cat stayed by Castiel’s side solely. Dean, of course, noticed immediately.

          “Where the hell did you get the cat, Cas?” he asked the second time he entered the room, only to find the kitten curled resolutely against Castiel’s side.

          As Castiel told him the story, Dean sat down and tried to puzzle out if cats were okay even if dogs weren’t.

          “Did you name the thing?” he asked, though a certain fondness crept into his voice as he leaned slightly toward the little creature.

          Castiel paused, watching Dean’s face carefully as he said, “Adam.”

          He thought maybe the name hadn’t been the best idea after all. Dean’s face did this weird convulsive thing, like he had forgotten about his half-brother completely and was filled with regret, odd hysteria, and embarrassment, all at once. Castiel watched his nonplussed, ashamed expression intently, as though he was trying to learn how to read human emotions so that he could properly express them later.

          “Dean,” Cas said quietly, without judgment or anger, “There was nothing you could do.”

          “Just don’t, Cas,” he spit, and abruptly stood and left the room.

          Castiel didn’t mention Adam much after that, and henceforth tried not to call the kitten by name.

 

Dean now spoke regularly to Castiel, as, besides Kevin, he was the only other fully conscious one in the bunker, albeit with the added hindrance of crutches. Pleased that they seemed to be back on good terms, Castiel revisited a decidedly touchy subject about a week after the episode with the cat.

          “Dean, I want to be a hunter.”

          Dean looked up in surprise and vague vexation from the burger he was eating. Kevin took one look between the two men, sensed the oncoming storm, gently set down his own sandwich and sidled casually into the other room.

          “Cas, we’ve talked about this.”

          “Dean,” he stubbornly insisted, “If I don’t learn, how am I supposed to be useful?”

          “Don’t you say that,” Dean immediately said, too loud. He sat up straight in his chair and all but glowered at the man sitting across from him. “Don’t you ever say that. You think you’re useless? You’re not useless, Cas. We need you.”

          Through the intervening months, Castiel heard the underlying message: _I need you_. He remembered what he had almost done that day, and let the subject drop.

          He, however, did not forget the other things he wanted to learn: the generic human activities that came so naturally to most people, but that Cas needed to learn as though he was a newborn swaddled in cloth and sobbing in a crib. Recognizing Dean’s reluctance to teach him hunting, and assuming this applied to all areas in which he needed schooling, Castiel did not bring up these other desires, either, until he had formulated a more concrete and persuasive plan.

          Meanwhile, Dean gradually relaxed, pleased that Castiel had apparently abandoned his quest to hunt. He had been accepting of this pursued career path back when he had been an angel abandoning Heaven, but now that Heaven had abandoned _him_ , and taken his powers, Dean was infinitely more averse to allowing his friend into such a dangerous occupation.

          Castiel knew that Dean had greatly deluded himself in this respect, thinking that Cas had given up his intentions; he deduced that he would have to ease Dean into his next request, because the hunter did _not_ respond well to surprises. He therefore decided to calm Dean down considerably before asking for his help.

          He waited a week, because he wanted everything to be perfect. He tried to enlist Kevin’s help, but the kid wasn’t good at much that didn’t relate to academics and translating tablets, so he instead set him the task of taking over Castiel’s shifts in watching over Sam so that he could have more time to prepare for Dean.

          Dean staggered in after a hunt—he had demoted Castiel back to researcher after the disaster with the ghosts—on a Thursday evening, only to find most of the lights in the bunker out, save for a faint one at the very end of the hall.

          “Cas?” he called out, reaching behind him for his gun. “Kevin?”

          Adam appeared out of nowhere and rubbed against his legs, and Dean startled.

          “Jesus H. Christ, Adam,” he muttered, nudging the kitten away with his foot. “I almost shot you.”

          “Don’t shoot the cat, please, Dean.”

          He looked up so fast he heard his neck crack. He reached over with one hand to rub at it, storing his gun back into his jeans with the other, and looked over at the trenchcoat-clad man in the doorway. He decided not to point out that he had almost shot Cas, too, and instead said,

          “What the hell is going on?”

          Castiel beckoned Dean toward him. When he complied, Cas reached over, nudged away Dean’s hand, and started quietly massaging his neck for him. Dean, however, shot him an incredulous and uncomfortable look, and Cas desisted immediately. Dean had always had personal space issues.

He looked away, trying to reassemble his thoughts, and said quickly, “I made you dinner.”

          “What—?”

          He stopped dead in the doorway. Castiel had transformed the room before him. Though they usually ate in the same room in which they researched, he had somehow made it look much more like an exceptionally fancy dining room. A white tablecloth covered that table that usually housed stacks of books on weapons, exorcisms, and laptops; two plates were laid out across from each other, the short way across the table; three vases were spread out evenly length-wise, each holding two of the roses from the bouquet that Dean had not appreciated as much as expected; and, directly between the two empty plates, with a salad bowl and bread on one side and a pasta dish on the other, sat a beautiful candelabra, flames flickering dimly in the otherwise lightless room.

          “Cas…is this a _date_?”

          Castiel, who had been smiling, cheerful and proud,  at his creation, frowned at the incredulity and disbelief in Dean’s voice that clearly stated he was about to close himself off completely.

          Cas cocked his head. “A date, Dean?” he repeated, obviously flummoxed. “Do you…do you want it to be a date?” His tone was all genuine innocence.

          “No!” the other shouted forthwith. “Jesus Christ, Cas!”

          “Dean,” said Cas hesitantly, leaning toward him imperceptibly, “Are you alright?”

          “What the hell is all this?”

          Castiel sighed. “You don’t think you deserve kindness, Dean? Please, sit. I made you dinner.”

          That wasn’t much of an answer, but he had always been a cryptic son of a bitch, so Dean complied regardless. They served themselves in silence, Cas throwing frequent glances in Dean’s direction. He only spoke when they had both begun eating, Cas a bit messily.

          “What’s wrong?”

          Dean stared hard at him for a full minute. “You really don’t see what’s wrong about this?”

          He just cocked his head again and squinted slightly at the other man.

          “Cas, do you even know what a date _is_?”

          “I may be a little slow on pop culture, but I’m still older than you,” Cas deadpanned. “A date is when two people who care about each other spend time together in the romantic sense.”

          “Yeah,” Dean agreed, though he sounded somewhat sarcastic. He gestured violently at the scene before them as he continued: “Roses? Very romantic. And the candles? Really, Cas? _Mood lighting_?”

          “I was just trying to do something nice for you, Dean,” he returned lowly, gripping the edge of the table so hard that he would have broken the wood if he still had his Grace.

          “Yeah, well for future reference, dudes don’t take other dudes on dates.”

          Castiel glared at the man across from him. “I thought I was doing something human.”

          After watching him for another few seconds, Dean seemed to recognize that Cas hadn’t meant any harm by the whole situation. He leaned back, then, and chuckled, then bent forward over his plate again to resume eating.

          Castiel watched him for a few minutes, trying to fathom him, but soon gave up and returned to his own meal.

          They ate in silence for another few minutes until Castiel realized he was being watched again and looked up.

          “What?”

          Dean was smiling again. “Oh man, didn’t they teach you how to eat spaghetti up in that hellhole?”

          “Heaven isn’t a hellhole,” said Cas automatically, “It’s in no way similar to Hell. And no, they didn’t teach me that. Between weapons training and brainwashing me to kill you, I wasn’t concerned with human eating rituals.”

          And Dean laughed. It sounded all new to Cas’s human ears now that his hearing wasn’t quite as fine-tuned and far-reaching; he could properly focus on, and fully appreciate, Dean’s laugh. He did it far too seldom, considering it sounded like honeysuckle and watermelons shot through with sunshine and angel wings.

          “Oh man,” he gasped, running his fingers through his hair, “Come here.”

Dean reached over the table and wrapped his hand around Cas’s fork, right over where Cas’s own hand already was, and demonstrated how to properly twirl, hold, and eat the noodles. Castiel was still pretty bad at it, strewing sauce and parmesan all over the table, but he wasn’t nearly as terrible as he had initially been.

“That’s close enough,” said Dean, still chortling as he clapped his friend on the shoulder and moved back over to his own side.

This reminded Castiel of his original mission. He looked up hesitantly at the man across from him and tentatively said, “Dean?”

Dean glanced up again, then did a double-take; his easy smile faltered when he saw the look Cas’s face, like he knew what was coming.

“Cas, don’t—”

“Will you…teach me how to be human?” Cas said, louder.

Dean just stared at him for a moment, clearly not expecting that. Cas’s anxiety grew slightly, though he took the fact that Dean’s expression wasn’t conveying _anger_ as a good sign. He looked…surprised, excited, bewildered, resigned…but not upset in the least.

Finally, Dean controlled his expression to a carefully blank one.

“‘Course I’ll help you,” he said, and quirked him half a smile before returning to his dinner.

Castiel looked down at his hands, which were twisting themselves into more shapes than a stomach freshly filled with Leviathan, and tried very hard not to smile.

          Dean shoveled food into his mouth to try and block out the odd cozy sensation that he could feel physically _blossoming_ in his stomach, because what the fuck was that? It almost worked, too.

 

Of course, as ever, things weren’t quite so simple.


	3. Learning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which all the Laundromat speculations are accurate.

Dean heaved himself out of the car and slammed it shut unnecessarily hard.

          “No. You have lost it if you think I’m letting you touch this car.”

          “But Dean—”

          “Cas!”

          Castiel glared at him and exited the Impala as well, hastening to fall into step with Dean, who hadn’t bothered to wait for him. He knew Dean well enough to recognize that he would never budge on this topic; he had a hard enough time letting his only brother behind the wheel. That information did nothing to lessen Cas’s animosity, and he wore a bitchface worthy of Sam all the way into the building.

          “Now,” Dean huffed once they were inside, clearly determined to verbally ignore the argument, even if his vocal chords weren’t quite ready to let it go. “Your education begins.”

          Castiel glowered reproachfully at the back of Dean’s head the entire way through the video store, remaining two steps behind the whole time. Dean’s enthusiasm picked up the longer they spent inside, until Castiel began to wonder just for whom exactly they were watching these films. He was fine with _Indiana Jones_ and _The Godfather_ and _Die Hard_ , but did he really need to see _Star Wars_ and _Terminator_ and _Taken_? The answer had apparently been _yes, obviously_ because Dean was throwing those titles on his cart along with a dozen other movies in which Cas had very little interest, and he was acting deaf to his friend’s protests.

          The cashier looked between them in surprise when they strolled up the counter, presumably because they were the only two in the store, aside from the old lady in the pink wig beside the Jackie Chan movies.

          “Big night in, guys?” the twenty-something year old asked in amusement.

          “Apparently,” said Castiel, leveling another glare at the back of Dean’s head.

          Dean evidently knew what look Cas was shooting him, because he rolled his eyes. “I’m _educating_ him.”

          “Should be a great date, anyway. _Die Hard_ ’s the best.” The boy grinned at them as he continued scanning their mountain of DVDs.

          “It’s not a date,” said Cas, watching the cashier closely. “Unless beer is equivalent to candles _in the romantic sense_?” As he quoted his friend, he looked over at his silhouette to gauge his reaction, trying to understand just exactly what constituted ‘acceptable.’

          “It’s not, Cas,” said Dean shortly. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say more, but then shut it, muttered, “Shut up,” roughly grabbed their bags, and left.

          Cas and the cashier both watched him storm away, surprised.

          “Trouble in paradise?” asked the cashier, and Cas turned to furrow his brow and tilt his head at the boy.

          “I don’t understand that reference,” he muttered angrily, and followed Dean out of the shop.

 

Both of their anger faded on the drive home. Castiel sat through three Metallica songs and Dean let him change it to The Beatles, whom he seemed to like. They only got through one song, thank god, before making it back to the bunker. Dean flipped off the music immediately—he may have been trying to make amends but he was also trying not to have his ears bleed—and climbed out, Castiel close behind. They walked too close together as usual, shoulders rubbing on every step, and were secretly pleased that the distance shown back in the video store had diminished.

          Dean was visibly excited about the movie marathon, though Cas still had misgivings. After checking on Sam—he was still unconscious as usual—and inviting Kevin to join them (“I just found the comic book collection—no thanks, guys”), Dean brought out beer and reheated pizza and settled on the couch next to Castiel.

          Cas started to lose control of his motor functions somewhere between _Taken_ and _Pulp Fiction_ , though every time he started to fall asleep, Dean elbowed him sharply in the ribs with a hissed, _“This is the best part!”_

          Eventually, Dean gave up; halfway through _Shoot ‘Em Up_ (which was admittedly a good movie, but it was also the fifth one they watched) Cas fell asleep again, tipping the last quarter of his now-warm beer all over the couch. Dean looked over, shook his head, got some rags to soak up the stain, and laid Cas down on his side with his head resting on the arm of the couch. He even covered him with an old patchwork quilt that had been lying over the back of the one of the armchairs. That settled, Dean fondly watched him sleeping for about ten seconds before realizing what he was doing, shaking himself, and walking quickly out of the room.

          Dean slept less soundly that night than he would have liked.

 

Castiel awoke the next morning oddly comfortable, as he had vague recollections of falling asleep with his head on Dean’s shoulder. He sat up quickly, alert in the face of an unexpected situation, but when the sheet fell onto his lap he realized that he was still in the bunker, even on the same couch. Realizing what had happened, he swung his feet off the couch and stood up, his trench coat wrinkled and worn without his angelic powers to make it spiffy.

          “Oh, man,” called an amused voice from the kitchen, apparently in step with his train of thought, “We’ve got to get you new clothes.”

          Castiel turned his head curiously, and then fully took in the scene before him: Dean, grinning easily at him from over his shoulder, a spatula in hand and casually stirring eggs in a pan, his hair ruffled from sleep, his AC/DC shirt and plaid boxers crinkled from overnight use. It looked so…domestic, so easy, so _normal_ in a way that Dean never got to experience…Castiel smiled more casually than he had managed thus far and tried to implant the picture in his mind so that he could turn it over for the rest of eternity. Or the rest of his life. Which weren’t the same thing anymore.

          He walked into the kitchen—he hadn’t yet mastered the relaxed movement that was “ambling” yet—which was just off of the Research Room and sat down at a table near the refrigerator. The pair sat in relative silence for the next few minutes, and then Dean placed breakfast in front of Cas, grabbed his own plate, and joined him at the table.

          During the small meal, Dean studied his friend closely, taking in his full appearance and judging him accordingly.

          “Man, we’ve got to get you a new outfit,” he repeated, this time around a mouthful of eggs and bacon. “Now that you can’t just angelify yourself clean…no offense, but you’re kind of a mess.”

          Castiel looked down at himself and grimaced; Dean had a point.

          “Come on, we’ll go shopping later. Finish up.” He nodded pointedly at Cas’s half-full plate, then stood and took his own to the sink.

          Castiel only had a few more bites; he wasn’t eating much nowadays, contrary to the burger binge he’d indulged in on the walk from Texas. He stood, threw his leftovers into the fridge for someone to finish later, and turned toward Dean wearily.

          “Don’t look like that, Cas,” said Dean, grinning and grabbing his arm excitedly. “We’ll get you out of that dirty trenchcoat and into some proper fighting clothes. Maybe I’ll even teach you how to wield a knife today.”

          Castiel raised his eyebrows; Dean must be in an exceptionally good mood if he was willing to teach Castiel some basic training, and he wasn’t sure what had triggered the sudden change. Dean, just pleased to have a little piece of normalcy with his fallen-angel best friend, smiled at him a little longer before walking out of the room, clearly expecting him to follow.

          With the King of Hell locked up in the dungeon and the Leviathan back in Purgatory, Dean had started running credit card scams again. When the pair of them (Kevin had neglected to join them _again_ , and Castiel was starting to get paranoid about his constant refusals) parked in front of a little thrift shop, Dean flipped open the glove box, pulled out a brand new card, held it up for Castiel’s perusal, waggled his eyebrows, and pocketed the credit card while he climbed out of the driver’s seat. Castiel, who had stoically watched Dean’s little display, followed suit.

          The place was nearly empty. As in the supermarket, a fairly disinterested Castiel walked two steps behind the rather more animated Dean. The latter, however, eventually realized he was talking to a shadow, and pulled him bodily forward so that they could converse like proper human beings. While they walked, and while Dean piled their basket with basically all plaid layers with a few plain undershirts and pairs of pants, Dean filled Castiel in on the vital information he had so maturely kept from him whilst viciously ignoring his existence the past few weeks, such as exactly what had gone down in that church and the fact that they had the king of Hell under lock and key somewhere in the bowels of the bunker. Castiel was really more impressed than startled.

          Desperate to make up for his poor behavior before The Great Fall, Castiel listened attentively and tried out some of the social skills he had been so carefully accruing. This worked fairly well, and if Dean noticed that he was acting slightly off, he didn’t acknowledge it past a few extra sidelong glances.

          Only when they made it up to the checkout counter did Castiel abandon his careful façade of mortality. He stopped dead, face hardened, and glared straight ahead. Dean walked a few more steps before realizing Cas hadn’t; he turned around, a question starting to form, but he noticed the ugly look Castiel had adopted and changed his inquiry mid-word.

          “Why—Cas, what’s the matter? What’s happened?” he whirled around, his hand flying to the waistband of his jeans, where he kept his gun concealed. He didn’t put it out in the middle of the store, but he kept his hand there, just in case.

          Castiel was still leveling a death stare at the cashier, who looked up at the commotion.

          She stared blankly at the pair of them for about two seconds, and then her face split into a wide grin utterly devoid of mirth.

          “Castiel! Slumming it again, are you?”

          She stepped out from behind the counter, and Castiel could see that, despite the “normal” life she had adopted, she was still the warrior she had been. Sleek thin boots up to her knees blended smoothly into tight black jeans, which melted just as easily into a black tank top and dark leather jacket. She looked like she needed a machine gun slung behind her back or a knife stuck into a thigh-holster. The wide predator grin wasn’t helping.

          “Charlotte,” said Castiel in his usual rough gravel of a voice, and though he seemed relatively calm, his right foot instinctively shifted back into his customary fighting position.

          “It’s Char now, actually,” she winked at him, but her eyes were still dead for all the smiles she was throwing his way. She was a cat, prepping someone with purrs and tail flicks right before she pounced at his throat.

          She pushed her lip out in a mock pout. “You messed up big time, Cassy,” she said, and then bared her teeth. “A lot of us aren’t very happy.”

          Dean stepped forward aggressively, putting himself slightly ahead of Castiel. “Woah woah woah,” he intoned loudly, throwing his hands out; Cas noticed the glint of a knife in his left. “Cas, who is this chick?” he indicated Char with his armed hand even as he turned his head to direct his question at Castiel.

          “Charlotte, this is Dean.” Castiel inclined his head vaguely in the hunter’s direction, then tilted it the opposite way. “Dean, this is Charlotte. She was in Naomi’s army.”

          “I wouldn’t call us an army, _Cas_ ,” she said, still all teeth and false smiles. She placed a delicate emphasis on the nickname as though it were a particularly disgusting art project a child had brought home. “ _We_ were a family. Where were you?”

          “I had my own family to contend with,” answered Castiel automatically, once more tipping his head very slightly in Dean’s direction.  Dean rolled his eyes, though his grip on the knife got tighter.

          “It wasn’t very nice to abandon us,” Char continued, taking a menacing step closer. An angel blade slid smoothly out of the sleeve of her jacket as she did so, and Cas took a step forward; Dean did as well, though his footwork moved him even more in front of Castiel, who gripped Dean’s sleeve tightly and jerked it, trying to get him to move. He could fight his own battles; he’d been fighting them for millennia before Dean had even been born. Char noticed the exchange and smirked. “A lot of us aren’t very happy with you,” she repeated. “But I bet I could make them very happy with _me_.”

          She didn’t charge, didn’t wave the blade at all; she simply jerked her hand crisply in the direction of the wall, and both Castiel and Dean went crashing into it. Blood trickled from Cas’s hairline; Dean split his lip. They could both feel bruises forming.

          “Oh, didn’t I mention?” said Char, with a sneering laugh. “I may be cast out, Cassy baby,          but unlike you, I’m still powerful.” She lunged across the store toward them, and Castiel and Dean rolled in opposite directions to avoid her. She slammed into the wall, but stood quickly and shook the dust and drywall from her hair and eyes. The men had both rolled to their feet. Castiel pulled an angel blade from his own pocket and turned to face Char, who laughed openly at him.

          “Play nice,” she said, and winked as she threw him into the wall opposite the register in time to turn and throw Dean into a coat rack.

          Dean fell into the pile of clothes and struggled to disentangle himself, but Castiel jumped to his feet almost immediately, knowing he was bleeding even more but ignoring his injuries for the time being. He spit bloodily onto the floor and ran at Char, who turned a few seconds too late; she managed to avoid a fatal blow, but his blade pierced her side, and she fell to the ground clutching her wound. She may have more superpowers than Castiel, but she was no longer a full angel.

          Dean got free just in time to see Castiel plunge a long knife into his fallen sister’s back. He gaped openly at the scene, automatically memorizing it without effort: Castiel, face contorted in hatred and disgust, a long angel blade expertly wielded in his hand, hair wild, his trenchcoat and suit bloodied from the fight. He didn’t look as though he was in any way disadvantaged because of his lack of wings; in fact, in this moment, he looked positively empowered. Dean almost smiled at his little hunting prodigy all grown up and killing things, and tried to implant the picture in his mind so that he could turn it over every time he lost faith.

          Castiel, oblivious to the reaction he was eliciting with the brutal murder of his sister, deftly removed the knife. He wiped it on his already ruined overcoat, eyes flicking up to find Dean in the mess that the thrift shop had become.

          “We should go,” he said gravely, indicating the door, and Dean nodded speechlessly. He made sure to the grab the bags on his way out—technically stealing, but he wasn’t exactly a patron saint of morals.

          Only once they were in the car and he had flipped on a Metallica tape did Dean speak:

          “We should get you cleaned up.”

          Cas nodded wordlessly, internal battle raging. He had killed his sister. He didn’t care what Char had tried to do, or even that she had struck first. He had killed his sister. Underneath the thin layer of remorse, he was as insouciant as ever. He wondered if he was at some point going to feel anything but apathy. That was all he ever felt anymore.

          Dean drove them around town then, looking for a suitable place. He wanted to get Castiel out of those bloody clothes as quickly as possible, as he was still attempting to draw as little attention to them as was feasible—although a brutal fight and homicide in the middle of the day had probably already ruined the prospect of a quiet, inconspicuous life here. They drove for about ten minutes before he found the right building, dull lights flickering, but not in a demonic way. They probably just had a crappy electrician. Hell, Dean could fix that up for extra cash if necessary.

          “Come on,” he said, exiting the Impala once more. “And lose the layers.” After stripping himself of the trenchcoat and suit jacket, Castiel got out as well, still not speaking, and followed Dean into the Laundromat.

          “Go change in the bathroom, alright? Don’t let anyone see you if you can help it.” He thrust the stolen bag of clothes at Castiel and pointed him in the direction of the restrooms. As he strode out of sight, Dean flopped down onto a free bench and wiped absently at his still-bleeding mouth.

          Safely ensconced in the empty bathroom, Cas set down the bag on one of the sinks and dug through it. It was mostly plaid, the usual Winchester wardrobe choice, and although there was a Henley or two in there and a few sweaters, he pulled out a red flannel and quickly stripped himself down in a stall. He also chose to change out of his old pants, exchanging them for plain jeans. He shoved his bloody clothes back into the bag on top of the new ones and exited the restroom.

          Dean looked up when Castiel came back out. He took him all in and blatantly stared, slack-jawed and with a touch of confusion barely creasing his brow. Cas dropped the bag on the bench next to Dean and spread his arms. “Better?”

          “I—uh—” And yeah, this had definitely happened before. Dean managed to nod, and then shook himself back to a functioning human being as Cas sat down next to him.

          “We need to get this stuff in the wash,” said Dean quietly, for the bench was a two-seater and they were sharing it with a shopping bag. He shot to his feet and riffled through it, dragging out Cas’s old suit, and shoved it unceremoniously into a free washer. After programming it correctly, he sat back down and stared blankly at the machine.

          “Dean,” said Castiel after a bit, leaning even more into Dean’s personal space than usual, and raising a tentative hand, one finger of which he hovered over Dean’s lower lip. Dean turned automatically to look at him. “You’re bleeding…”

          He touched his finger lightly to Dean’s lip, but after a minute pulled away, looking dejected. He couldn’t even heal a stupid bloody lip anymore.

          Dean licked absently at the cut. “It’s nothing.”

          “You should still fix it, Dean,” said Cas matter-of-factly, and stood, obviously expecting Dean to follow as he marched back to the bathroom.

          He did. Dean examined his face in the mirror, which was even worse than he had originally thought; aside from the split lip, a nice bruise was forming like a shadow underneath his jaw, and his temple had a cut slashing through it. He dabbed at the injuries with a wet paper towel, but they weren’t serious. He wiped off as much dried blood as he could, trying to be somewhat presentable, and turned to throw away the dirty paper towels, only to discover that Castiel was standing directly behind him, and _much_ too close.

          “Jesus Christ, Cas, what are you doing?” he asked, tossing the wad over the other’s shoulder and managing to get it in the waste basket.

          “I’m sorry, Dean,” he answered automatically, though he did nothing to remove himself from Dean’s personal space.

          They stared at each other for a very long time. Minutes passed, and they just watched each other, blue eyes boring into green ones and vice versa, but suddenly Dean’s expression changed from determinedly straight to one that seemed to say _fuck it_ and he reached forward, fisted the brand-new button-up just underneath the collar on either side, and hauled Castiel almost violently forward, and their lips crashed together like an earthquake, or a tsunami, or maybe it was just the angels hitting the Earth all over again, or else they had just created an entirely new galaxy.

          Castiel was completely unresisting, though not passive; his own mouth opened slightly on instinct, though Dean did not immediately take advantage of this. He just kissed him, physically open-mouthed but not yet deepening it, until about a minute had passed, at which point Castiel did it himself. His tongue tangled easily with Dean’s, and they fought playfully for dominance of the kiss.

          Cas won. After another minute or two, he spun them around and shoved Dean against the wall, _hard_ , their mouths separating for maybe half a second, if that. Dean released his hold on Cas’s now hopelessly rumpled shirt, running them instead over his waist and over his lower back, holding him in place. Cas smiled briefly at the possessive touch, his own hands reaching up to tangle in the hair at the crown of Dean’s head. Cas pressed himself to the other man as closely as possible, though he barely moved from there, and with a grunt Dean slotted one of his legs between Cas’s and Castiel quickly realized there were a few perks to kissing a bowlegged boy.

          Dean’s fingers scrambled against Castiel’s back, and he wasn’t sure exactly what Dean was trying to do until he successfully pressed them underneath the waistband on his jeans and roughly tugged up the plaid shirt. Cas, in turn, moved a few millimeters away, just enough that he could reach up and shove Dean’s blue over-shirt off his shoulders. The dark brown Henley underneath fit him perfectly, and Castiel was allowed about three seconds’ admiration before Dean claimed his mouth and attention again. His fingers scrabbled for purchase against Cas’s chest now as he hurriedly undid the buttons that Castiel had for some ungodly reason decided to do all the way up. When he had successfully popped off every button, Dean didn’t even shove off the shirt, just let it hang open to reveal Cas’s torso. Dean ran a few fingers over this expanse of chest and stomach while Cas detached himself from Dean’s mouth in favor of the wide, unmarked territory of his neck.

          Dean’s hands moved from Cas’s chest so that the ex-angel could wriggle closer, and he gripped the exposed hips tightly even as he threw his head back, expanding Castiel’s canvas. Cas may not have done this before—save for a few light kisses exchanged with his extremely conservative and religious ex-wife Daphne, with whom he had never copulated anyway—but he was doing _something_ right, if Dean’s loud moans were anything to go by.

          _Perhaps we should go into a stall_ , Cas wanted to suggest, but his lips and tongue were a little busy right now, so he just grunted and pushed Dean’s Henley up. As good as it looked on him, he wanted to touch skin. Dean lifted his arms cooperatively, and Castiel had to stop what he was doing for about two seconds as he lifted the shirt over the other’s head and threw it on the growing pile on the dingy Laundromat bathroom floor.

          This sudden lack of touch elicited a loud moan from Dean, who gripped Cas’s hips again and brought their mouths back together. Having divested the other of most of his clothing, Castiel’s hands returned to Dean’s hair, except suddenly this wasn’t enough and Dean started rolling his hips against Castiel’s, which is when they both properly realized that they were incredibly hard.

          Maybe Dean would have been more embarrassed about the fact that he was apparently massively gay for his best friend if he wasn’t so turned on by that very same half-naked best friend, so instead he shoved his shirt the rest of the way off and continued grinding their hips together.

          Cas, realizing by some instinct what he wanted, moved his hands down Dean’s back and sides and around his jeans to undo the front buttons. Dean paused for maybe half a second before, with yet another moan, he pressed his lips to Cas’s neck and made a slow trail down his finely-toned abdomen until he reached the top of his jeans. While his fingers struggled to undo the buttons, he sucked a bruise into Cas’s side, and only when he finally managed to pull the jeans down to the knees did Castiel haul him back to his feet for another hasty, impassioned kiss, during which he stepped out the rest of the way out of the pants tangled somewhere near his feet.

          Having already unlatched Dean’s own, Cas shoved roughly at them from his awkward standing position, his hands pausing on Dean’s ass. Dean rolled his hips again and divested himself of his jeans properly, and then they were just standing there in their boxers and neither knew where they wanted to go with this, they just knew that they wanted to go _somewhere_ , or maybe everywhere, and they were still kissing roughly and Castiel had both his hands on Dean’s ass and Dean had started biting at his lower lip and Cas knew suddenly what he wanted to do.

          He leveled a heavy look directly into Dean’s eyes, which startled the hunter into stillness for a second, which was just enough time for Cas to disentangle himself and sink down to the floor. His knees were on something soft—maybe his shirt, or Dean’s pants, he didn’t know, there were a lot of clothes on the floor at the present moment—and he finally pulled Dean’s boxers off, which pretty much confirmed that Dean was as turned on as Castiel was right now. He looked up at Dean, a far too innocent expression on his face considering the position he was in, and smiled for a second before leaning forward and taking his dick into his mouth.

          Dean immediately tangled his hands into Castiel’s hair, struggling through the fog in his brain to remember not to thrust desperately up into Cas’s mouth, because he hadn’t done this before. Although that last fact was hard to remember when Cas was licking at the head and pressing his tongue along his shaft and his fingers were digging sharply into the back of his thighs, and Dean’s head fell back against the wall again, because Cas was sucking like he had five years’ worth of sexual tension built up inside of him and this was his only release.

          Oh, wait.

          As though he knew that Dean was close, Cas suddenly pulled off, much to Dean’s consternation. He threw him a look of vague irritation, but Cas just watched him in amusement as he got to his feet and drew him back into a kiss that was equally as rough as the first. After a minute of this, he pressed a kiss instead to the corner of Dean’s mouth and licked and sucked his way across his jaw, until he was right beside his ear, and in a husky voice even more gravelly than usual, said,

          “Dean, I am going to continue to kiss you, and you are going to get rid of my boxers and fuck me, do you understand?”

          Cas may not have been any good at dirty talk, but holy _shit_ did he get right to the point.

          Dean, of course, had no objections. He kicked pointedly at his jeans on the floor while Castiel reclaimed his mouth and his own fingers fumbled at the waistband of Cas’s boxers. Cas moved back to suck at Dean’s neck as both of them stepped out of their boxers—Dean’s were still tangled at his ankles—and then flipped them around so that Cas’s bare back was pressed to the cold, cheap wallpaper and Dean was the one pressing insistently. Dean darted down to pick through his pockets himself, and maybe he kept a condom and a small pack of lube in his pants. It was an evidently useful strategy, considering the position in which he currently found himself.

          He straightened again and pressed a few more insistent kisses to Castiel’s mouth while rolling on the condom. Cas’s hands had returned to the top of Dean’s head, which was apparently his usual style of kissing. Dean ripped open the packet and poured the contents all over his hands. He grabbed himself with one hand while the other found its way to Cas’s ass, and he coated his own dick in lube. He used both hands to dig his fingers into the backs of Cas’s thighs, who understood the silent command and jumped. Dean caught him nicely, pressing him further back into the wall for better purchase, and Castiel discovered a second advantage of hooking up with bowlegged boys. He wrapped his own legs around Dean’s waist and resumed kissing his neck.

          Dean kept one hand on Cas’s waist, keeping him aloft, while the other reached around to circle his hole. He hesitated for a second, wondering after consent, which Cas gave in the form of a quiet moan before he returned to the task at hand. Accepting this, Dean pressed in one finger. At this, Castiel finally stopped ravaging Dean’s jugular and slammed his own head into the wall, mumbling what sounded like repetitions of Dean’s name. After a bit, he added another finger, and when this elicited a muffled groan from where Cas had now buried his head in Dean’s collarbone, he started stretching him. He slipped in a third soon after, and Castiel’s mumbling increased slightly in volume, his lips vibrating against Dean’s neck, which rendered concentration difficult.

          A particularly insistent and coherent _Dean_ made him realize that Castiel had reverted from pleasured ramblings to commands again, and he obligingly shifted Cas slightly so that he was holding more of his waist and even less space remained between them. Their hips slotted together perfectly, and Dean could suddenly feel a smile pressed against his neck. He smiled himself, a very small, private smile, and Dean pressed in.

          He did it agonizingly slowly, too, because despite his bossiness and eagerness, Castiel was realistically a virgin, though both of them were having some trouble remembering this piece of information. Dean pushed until he bottomed out, and he waited, allowing Cas time to adjust, though every nerve in his body was screaming at him to shift, to thrust, to do _something_.

          Finally, the incessant repetition of his name started up again, and Dean knew he was safe to move, so he did. Slowly at first, shallowly, he started to thrust in and out, but when the rhythm of Castiel’s hips picked up, Dean recognized the silent request and matched his pace. They continued this until Dean wasn’t thrusting shallowly anymore; he was pulling almost all the way out before slamming back in, and it was rough, and it was perfect, and Dean found the right angle to hit Cas’s prostate every time. At this, curiously, his mumblings cut off completely, and he returned to kissing Dean’s neck as though there was any unmarked skin left.

          Dean was the one making the absurd amount of noise now, moaning almost loudly enough to cover the sound of their hips grinding together every time he slammed into Cas. Castiel, whose hands had thus far remained knotted in Dean’s hair, removed one of them so that he could touch himself. This part was experimentation, too, but he picked up on the basics pretty quickly, as it was obvious what felt good. He jerked himself off sloppily, but it was his first time doing even that, and soon Dean picked one of his hands off Cas’s hips and covered the hand wrapped around his dick so that he could help him. And with Dean’s touch, their rhythms perfectly matched, and with Dean buried inside of Castiel as far as he could go, they both came at the same time.

          They kissed through their simultaneous orgasm, both still stroking Cas through it, and though Dean had stopped moving his hips, Cas was still grinding down. Dean moaned more than once, though Castiel deftly swallowed the sound as though he was used to tasting the noises out of Dean’s mouth.

          When it was over, Dean pulled out and immediately threw the condom into the garbage can, which, he saw with a startled reminder of reality, fell on top of the paper towel dirtied with his own blood. He had forgotten about all that had come before, as though his life had, for this moment, zeroed down to this day, this moment, here with Castiel in a crappy Laundromat bathroom after kicking angelic ass.

          But it all came crashing down now as he watched Castiel reach down to pull his boxers and jeans back on and shrug on his flannel. He stared as Castiel buttoned his shirt up again, too high, and as he finally turned to smile faintly at the dumbstruck hunter.

          Cas was clearly waiting for Dean to say something, but he found that he had nothing to say.

          When the silence stretched on longer, Castiel decided to end it himself. “Thank you for educating me, Dean,” he said, a slight hint of laughter evident even though his face remained as carefully stoic as ever.

          The sound of Castiel’s voice doing something other than moaning his name shoved Dean the rest of the way back to reality, and he suddenly flushed and hastened to redress. Cas watched him in vague amusement as he scrambled around, collecting his clothing from the floor, but when he reached down to help, Dean said, “I’ve got it, Cas.”

          Maybe he was imagining it, but that sounded harsher than usual.

          Maybe not, though. When Dean had finally pulled all of his clothes back on, he grinned shiftily at Cas, said, “Your clothes are probably finished,” and walked out of the bathroom. Castiel watched him go, a new feeling welling up inside of him. He had thought that he had experienced the full spectrum of human emotion in the past few weeks, but he had been wrong, evidently.

          Only when he followed Dean back into the populated main room did he realize what the feeling was: _Pride_. When Dean had looked at him just then, he had seemed genuinely _happy_. Like he thought that this thing they had just done was good, and that he actually deserved it.

          _Dean_ actually thought he deserved _happiness_.

          Castiel joined Dean in removing his freshly cleaned clothes and shoving them into the bag with his other garments, and though they didn’t speak, sometimes they bumped hands or shoulders or hips, and thus smiled faintly at one another.

          Right before they left the Laundromat, Dean grabbed Castiel’s arm and pulled him in for a much softer kiss than the ones that they had shared before, like he just wanted to see what it would be like to have this thing that he was now allowed. He winked at Cas when it was over and exited the building, the bell above the door chiming faintly.

         

Thirteen miles away, Sam awoke, gasping and shaking. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry if this seems rushed into, but keep in mind that it’s been five seasons of canon sexual tension coming. 
> 
> This is literally my first-ever foray into writing smut, so I apologize if the experience was somehow dissatisfying for you. Please—corrections, suggestions, and criticisms are WELCOME and APPRECIATED. We all want good sex scenes, yeah?
> 
> Also my Disney soundtrack started playing right before Dean fucked him, so I’m really sorry if my mental scarring disrupted Cas’s loss of virginity. It's also two in the morning.
> 
> And finally, I’m sorry that Sam only just woke up—I swear I wasn’t shoving him aside for the sake of a Destiel plot. I’m trying to maneuver as close to Season 9 as possible, and since that’s not out yet, it’s all speculation. I think this would still be first, maybe beginning of second episode, so it’s not unrealistic that someone as sick as Sam has been unconscious for so long. I swear he comes in with full force soon and shit goes down. Promise!


	4. Feeling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I like to call this one, “The one where they almost have sex a lot, but don’t.” Also, shit starts to go down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The way I saw it, Dean would have reacted two ways:  
> “I just had sex with a dude” or “get over it, it’s the twenty-first century.” Originally I was opting for the former, but the story took some weird turns I hadn’t exactly expected, and this fit better.

The ride home was quiet but not unpleasantly so; Castiel stared out the window, distantly fascinated with the people passing, and Dean reached over and rested his hand on Cas’s thigh. Nobody spoke about this, nobody even looked at it, but neither of them could mentally focus on anything else.

          They got out of the car at the same time, still not saying anything, and for all that Cas usually stared at Dean like it was his job (which it technically had been), suddenly he couldn’t find enough other things to notice. Dean would have been more worried about this strange behavior if he hadn’t been so amused, because honestly, _he’d just fucked his best friend in a Laundromat._ God, if he’d known this was coming, he would have expected to have a crisis, but he just felt overwhelming relief and satisfaction. It had been a long time coming, really. He couldn’t even get upset, or frustrated, or nauseated, or disgusted, or _anything_ negative about the whole situation. He liked Cas; he found Cas attractive; he had sex with Cas. Logically, it all added up to one pretty cheerful Dean.

          Castiel wasn’t sure _what_ to feel. He was still struggling with the whole messy pallet of human emotions anyway, and this hadn’t helped matters. He had spent centuries upon centuries learning that he shouldn’t copulate with humans, nor get close to humans, nor _feel_ for humans; just because he was one now didn’t mean that he didn’t have millennia of propaganda throwing itself violently across his brain. Nephilim were prohibited, compassion wasn’t allowed, disobeying orders was completely taboo.

          Not that he wasn’t ecstatic about the events that had just transpired; he _had_ rebelled after all, efficiently proving that Castiel didn’t care much for Heaven’s rules. He liked Dean, and Dean made him happy; Dean was worth saving, Dean deserved good things, Dean _seemed_ happy; ergo, having sex with Dean was a positive experience. Maybe logic didn’t apply to emotions, but Cas was having trouble figuring them out any other way—and anyway, this added up logically, so he accepted it.

          They didn’t speak as they walked into the bunker, each trying not to think too hard as Dean hated probing his feelings and Castiel was still unsure exactly how to maneuver with such heavy burdens. They flipped on lights as they walked, and by some unspoken agreement they went all the way to Sam’s room.

          Dean froze in the doorway.

“Sammy,” he whispered, and immediately remembered how to move. He ran across the room and stopped at Sam’s bedside. Sam blinked blearily at his older brother and croaked out his name. Dean shushed him hurriedly, so Sam just looked at him tiredly instead—though this was not the same tiredness that had carried him off to sleep so often these past weeks. This was pure _jadedness_ , and it clearly went deeper than bone.

          Sam smiled exhaustedly at Dean, and Dean frowned worriedly at Sam, and Castiel watched over the scene with a slight frown on his face, assessing with growing concern.

          “Cas, can you…can you leave us alone for a minute?” asked Dean with forced politeness, never turning away from Sam. Castiel observed the sick man for a moment longer before turning and disappearing without a word.

          Dean turned around to watch him go; once Castiel had disappeared down the hall, he turned back to his brother and tried to form a confession, but instead he said, “When’d you wake up?”

          “Maybe half an hour ago. Forty-five minutes.”

          “How are you doing, Sam? Really?”

          Sam forced another smile. “I’m fine, really Dean.” Of course, his intermittent coughing did little to support this sentiment, as did the pained expression that crossed his face with the massive effort required to even speak. “I just need to sleep a couple more days and I’ll be fighting again in no time.”

          Dean was clearly unconvinced. He opened his mouth to disagree but Sam quickly changed the subject. He nodded vaguely towards Dean and said, “You’ve been, uh, having fun while I’ve been out?”

          Dean furrowed his brow, then realization shot through him and his hand clapped over his hickey-covered neck. “That’s—”

          “Don’t say it’s nothing, Dean,” Sam broke in. “So who is she?”

          Dean dropped his gaze but not his hand. “She’s…nobody. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is getting you better.”

          “I’m _fine_ ,” he reiterated, but Dean just shook his head, muttered “you stubborn son of a bitch,” and got up to fetch him soup; he hadn’t eaten since he’d last woken up, which had been two days ago.

          Cas was sitting at the kitchen table, studying the woodwork with his hands folded. He glanced up when Dean entered the room and immediately stood.

          “How is Sam?” he asked seriously, inclining his head very slightly.

          Dean proceeded straight to the fridge without looking at him, and the worry lines in Castiel’s forehead deepened even further than they had when he had stood in the doorway to Sam’s room.

          “Dean?”

          “He’s fine.” His voice came out rushed and muffled, head stuffed as it was in the fridge.

          Suddenly a hand descended on his shoulder. He jerked up immediately, spinning around, his back pressing into the shelves of the still-open refrigerator. Castiel eyed him curiously at this sudden show of modesty, as usually Dean handled his proximity quite well, and rarely even flinched anymore. He studied his face carefully, then intoned his name again, low and serious. Dean was intensely aware that Castiel’s hand was covering the scar on his shoulder.

          Castiel noticed his obvious tenseness and instinctively removed his hand. Anything that made Dean unhappy had to go.

          “Is this about what happened in the Laundromat?” asked Cas, studying Dean’s face carefully. He seemed guarded, tense; at these words, his eyes narrowed slightly.

          “I don’t want to have this conversation.”

          “Dean,” said Cas forcefully, crowding Dean further into the freezing box behind him, “I’m not asking to be with you for eternity. I just need to know what’s happened.”

          Dean glowered at him, frustrated by his closeness but not turning away. “It’s _not_ about the Laundromat, okay?”

          “You’re lying.” The words were simple, but they sounded harsh. Castiel paused. “Is this about Sam?”

          Dean looked away, which was answer enough.

          “Is this about not being here when he awoke?”

          He turned back abruptly to face Castiel, a growl rising low in his throat. He didn’t seem inclined to answer for a moment, but then the floodgates broke.

          “Do you know when Sam woke up?” Castiel didn’t answer, but Dean didn’t seem to expect him to. “About forty-five minutes ago, that’s when. Do you know where _I_ was?”

          Still, Cas didn’t respond, though his expression morphed into one of minor concern at the rising anger in Dean’s tone. Whether this rage was turned inward or outward, Cas didn’t like it. Dean continued, his voice rising even further.

          “Where was I when my own little brother woke up? I was getting a blowjob in a shitty Laundromat bathroom! By _you_! Or maybe I was already plowing you into the wall by then, I don’t know. The point is, I wasn’t there for him, and you know why? Because I was with you. I can’t afford to slack off like that. Sam’s my priority, period. You understand? Sam comes first. No matter what.”

          Castiel turned his head away from this tirade, unable to look Dean in the face. “I’m not asking you to put Sam second,” he said lowly, trying to mask his hurt with a hushed volume.

          “You don’t get it. There is no ‘second.’ Sam’s the whole list. Nothing else matters but him. There’s no demons, there’s no angels, there’s no _nothing_. Sam’s it. He’s all I’ve got.”

          Castiel really wished that he could still disappear. He _really_ didn’t like these too-human emotions coursing viciously through him, and what the _hell_ was that faint prickling warmth in his sinuses? He had to get out of this kitchen, he had to get away from _Dean_.

          “You said we were family,” he said stiffly, standing up much straighter and schooling his expression back into his careful, impenetrable mask.

          Something in Dean’s stomach ached hollowly at this, but he knew he was being unfair so he couldn’t really protest.

          “Sam’s my blood. He’s the one that counts,” he said coolly instead.

          Castiel’s expression didn’t even flicker. He immediately moved away from Dean and walked out of the kitchen. Dean looked after him for a second, his face falling into a painful mix of sorrow and vexation, and then turned, reached into the cabinet, and slammed a bottle of whiskey down with a loud sort of finality. Dean didn’t drink much anymore, but he was drinking tonight.

 

 

They didn’t talk about that fight in the following days. In fact, from the way they ignored the issue so thoroughly, that day might not have happened at all, except for the fact that Sam was now awake (he could even get up for about an hour every day now). Dean continued to watch him carefully, but not as carefully as Castiel, who monitored the man with something almost regretful in his expression.

          Of course, Castiel still needed lessons in being human, and because they were pretending that that entire sex- and angst-filled day hadn’t happened, Dean still taught him. He taught him how to smile more naturally, how to pee without spraying the walls, which music to listen to, and how to properly respond to which pop culture references. He gave him a thorough education in movies and music, and helped him properly set a voicemail.

          “That’ll do for now, anyway,” said Dean somewhat crossly, sitting across the coffee table from him in the living room. He looked around curiously for something to do, and his eyes alighted on something.

          “We could play video games? You got the Xbox fixed, right?”

          “Ah,” said Cas hesitantly, nervous- and guilty-looking. “No, I…I, uhm, forgot.”

          “Didn’t you go out that day when I was hunting the vamp nest? What happened?”

          Castiel shifted his eyes away. “I got caught up in other duties.”

          Dean continued to watch him curiously, almost accusatorily, so Cas quickly said, “Will you teach me to swim today, Dean?”

          He recognized Castiel’s resolution and surrendered. In ten minutes they had packed the Impala and were off to find a local swimming hole.

          The first one they came across was absolutely packed with people, so they opted for the second instead. This one was much quieter, accommodating only two or three families total, and was more of a lake than a pool. It came with the added benefits of a rope swing and a rocky ledge to cliff jump off of.

          The other patrons were all crowded on one side of the lake, so Dean and Cas went to the other edge and threw down their provisions. They expected to spend the day, and so had brought appropriate changes of clothes as well as sustenance. Dean stripped down immediately to the swimming trunks he was wearing, preparing to dive in, but when Cas didn’t move he turned around inquisitively.

          “What’s up?” he asked, walking back toward him. Cas just shook his head. He hadn’t even changed out of his jeans, jacket, and t-shirt. Dean shook his shoulder affably. “Come on man, get changed. I’ll set up.”

          So Cas moved off into the bushes nearby and Dean laid back on a towel, chewing absently at some trail mix they had brought. Castiel returned a few minutes later and dropped his clothing in a heap next to Dean’s leg, and Dean was left to slowly look up at Castiel until he had managed to get a very thorough view of his entire body before reaching his eyes.

          Dean had never actually seen Castiel without his trenchcoat and layers, not properly and without the sex haze anyway. He hadn’t had time to examine, to appreciate. He now openly but absentmindedly sat examining his body—until he noticed the faint bruise on his hip, almost completely faded by the intervening days, and left by mouth or fingers he couldn’t remember. Dean shook himself, profanities screaming in his head, and forced his eyes away. He jumped to his feet, disgusted with himself, and dove into the lake.

          Castiel, unsure of the cause for the ugly look that had just crossed Dean’s face, plodded in slowly after his friend. He didn’t go too far, afraid the floor would drop out. Dean did one lap across the lake and then returned to him, and began to calmly explain the basics of freestyle.

          Cas was pretty good at swimming once he received instruction. He had of course seen humans swim for millennia, though he had never attempted it himself—still, he knew the basic theory. Even though putting this into practice was a whole other level entirely, he caught on quickly.

          Dean grinned at his quick learning and convinced him to try to jump off the rope swing. They took turns messing around for several hours, glad to have a day off—their first day off in a really long time, without worrying about monsters or demons or angels or Sam.

          Around two in the afternoon, they collapsed back up on the rocks for a late lunch. The sandwiches that they’d made before coming were a little warm, but they were still pretty good, and the pair of them sat and chatted and ate for awhile.

          Cas still was wearing only those stupid trunks that showed a _lot_ of skin. Dean had almost successfully trained himself to shut down his treacherous thoughts when the guy was fully clothed, but he was having a hell of a time with it now. Of course, the faint bruises were still visible against his hips, but Dean wasn’t exactly focusing on this spots, not now that he had a full view of Cas’s chest and stomach and legs and forearms and back and _god_ , pretty much whatever he wanted to look at was open for inspection. Cas chattered away happily about some family anecdote or other, and in between trying to stay focused long enough to catch the moral of this story and watching his mouth actually form the words, Dean barely had enough brainpower left to notice how good his hair looked all ruffled and waterlogged, but he was a pretty good multitasker. Cas just looked…so _content_. Dean rarely saw the guy smile, but he thought that he really ought to do it more often. Although, his stomach had been contracting painfully ever since Cas had walked out from behind the bushes, so he wasn’t sure that he should get any added temptation in his everyday life when he could barely handle this.

          Dean had been steadily leaning closer during Cas’s speech, though he hadn’t noticed the transition. Of course, Castiel was always standing or sitting way too close, so there wasn’t a lot of distance to close anyway. Suddenly, though, he found himself nearly pressed to Cas’s side, the lengths of their legs so close together that they could both feel the air crackle in that odd way it does when something’s too close to skin without actually touching it. Their arms were pressed together at the elbows, and for some odd reason Dean just really wanted lean properly against him and watch him tell more stories.

          But Dean’s a more subtle person than that. So instead of leaning against Cas, he sat up properly and, in this casual movement, shifted his hand so that it was touching the outside of Cas’s thigh, because he still wanted to be close to him. Castiel suddenly stopped speaking for a split second, his eyes hyper-focused on Dean’s face, before he restarted his monologue. The barest hint of a smirk played on Dean’s lips, and he tried not to think too hard about how many of his own rules he was breaking as he started to move his hand _very_ slightly back and forth against his leg.

          Castiel suddenly stopped talking completely and glared at him. He was standing before either of them knew what had happened. Dean gazed up at him, hurt even though he had no right to be.

          “You can’t act like this, Dean,” and for all the world he sounded _chiding_. “I thought you couldn’t afford to _slack off_?” He suddenly shoved his face very close to Dean’s as he quoted him, glaring heavily.

          Dean tried desperately not to move. He could stand up to a ghost being this close; he could stay still when Cas got angry.

          “Where are your priorities now, Dean? You don’t get to control me, to _use_ me. People have been doing that for far too long.”

          Something about the furious tone of Cas’s voice made Dean act even stupider than usual, and before he could stop himself, he’d grabbed the back of Castiel’s neck and pushed their lips together. A flicker of frustration ignited inside of his head, because now that Cas was human, he couldn’t tell if he was _letting_ himself be pulled around, or if he really had no choice.

          Cas’s answer was clear when he opened his lips and shoved at Dean’s shoulders, forcing him backward onto the stone, hovering over him. His eyes still blazed menacingly. With no clothing to grab onto, Dean clutched his shoulders and pulled him down for another kiss, then rolled them over so that Cas was the one pressed against the rock, with Dean leaning over his side. He quickly remedied this slightly awkward position by slotting himself between Cas’s legs, his lips leaving Cas’s as he did so and instead being put to use against his neck. After sucking in one bruise, or maybe two, he pressed his lips against his ear and hissed,

          “’M not _using_ you, Cas. I just—”

          He was fortunate that Castiel knotted his hands into his hair and pulled their mouths back together, because Dean didn’t actually have an end to that really lame explanation.

           They lay there kissing lazily for about ten minutes before Dean started to grind his hips down again, at which point Castiel became the voice of reason and pushed at his shoulders again, so that Dean was forced to brace himself on either side of Cas’s arms and raise himself up. Even as he did this, he continued moving his hips in a sickeningly dirty way, and Cas had to fight to stay still and not give in to the rising need that Dean was evoking.

          “Dean,” he whispered, but Dean had already gotten impatient and started nibbling at his neck and collarbone again. He hummed softly against Cas’s skin to indicate that he was listening, although he did not stop sucking at the dip at the bottom of Cas’s neck. _“Dean, there are families on the other side of the lake. They’re watching us.”_

          At this, Dean glanced briefly to the side; indeed, the ten or so people gathered there were absorbed in their little display, though with different emotions playing across their faces. The children looked distantly fascinated, the teenagers perversely intrigued, the parents scandalized and disgusted and positively fuming. Dean stopped rolling his hips and started violently shaking with laughter, until he could no longer hold himself up and he collapsed on top of Castiel, who shoved him off.

          Castiel got to his feet and inclined his head slightly at Dean, who was still lying on the ground, staring up at him. “We should go.”

          Dean rolled to a standing position as well, his thoughts already in chaos. He tried to ignore his throbbing dick, which was definitely prominent in his shorts, as he shoved all their provisions back into the bag they had brought and slung it over his shoulder. He again refused to look at Castiel, save for a poor excuse for a small smile that convinced absolutely no one, and made his way back to the Impala in silence, making sure to stay two or three strides in front of Castiel.

          Cas trailed somewhat gloomily behind Dean, unsure what had just happened. He sat shotgun on the way home, but spent the entire ride glaring out the window with his arms crossed on his chest. Dean did nothing to amend either of their moods, nor the situation itself.

 

“Train me how to hunt.”

          This was the first time he had brought it up in awhile, but he felt that, especially after the situation with Charlotte, he definitely needed to know a few things.

          Maybe Dean heard the undercurrent of _you owe me after the shit you pulled at the lake today_ , because he just nodded jerkily and didn’t say anything as he continued cooking dinner.

          They ate quietly that night; or at least half of the bunker’s residents did. Sam managed to make it all the way to the table that night and even remained mostly alert the entire meal, talking happily with Kevin, who was pleased to have somebody paying attention to him (Dean and Castiel, wrapped up in fights and sex and more fights, had admittedly been neglecting him a little), and occasionally pulling answers out of Dean and Castiel when he asked either of them direct questions. They didn’t look at each other the whole meal, and they certainly didn’t speak to each other.

          While Kevin and Cas cleaned up and Dean supervised Sam’s return to his room, Sam said, “What’s going on with you and Cas?”

          If Dean stiffened slightly, nobody said anything. “Nothing, man, nothing.” At Sam’s skeptical look, he added, “Everything’s fine. We’re awesome.” His smile was forced and false and Sam didn’t buy it.

          “Come on, you can’t lie to me. You suck at it. Is he the one who gave you the hickeys?”

          Dean’s eyes widened slightly. “What? No. No! Of course not. No.”

          Sam’s raised his eyebrows, and he managed to make even that simple gesture seem sarcastic. “Okay, if you say so. I’m just saying…you both came home with bruises that night. So I just figured—”

          “We got into a fight, okay? With an angel. In a thriftshop. An angel—”

          Sam cast him a pitying look. “It’s okay, you know. I don’t…I don’t think _less_ of you. I’m not…I’m not Dad, Dean.”

          Dean swallowed his initial instilled fury, because he knew Sam was right. John _would_ have thought less of him, probably. John loved him, he knew John loved them both, and nothing could have changed that. He just would have considered it somehow…less. Less masculine, less acceptable, whatever. He wouldn’t have said anything, sure. He would have invited Castiel around and let him hunt with them and _tolerated_ him…but he would have never _accepted_ Cas, not the way he would have accepted Lisa, not the way he _did_ accept Cassie.

          Dean just made a face like Sam was being an idiot and said loudly, “I know that! Come on, man, it’s 2013. Don’t be stupid.”

          But Sam, of course, wasn’t the one being stupid.

          Truth be told, Dean wasn’t sure _why_ he was having an internal struggle. He just was, and he wasn’t one to delve too deeply into his feelings. So he let himself feel sort of conflicted and continued to hate himself.

 

They started training the next morning. They cleared out one of the unused bedrooms and took out some fake knives that Kevin had picked up, so Cas could have all the necessary practice without the risk of accidentally murdering Dean or himself.

          “That’s not how you hold it!” shouted Dean for the umpteenth time. “Are you an axe murderer in a shitty chick flick? No! So hold it correctly, for God’s sake!”

          Castiel furrowed his brow. “I don’t think my father wants me to—”

          “No! Just…just hold the fucking knife correctly, okay?”

          “Okay.”

          Dean charged at him while Castiel flipped the knife out the thigh holster they had given him, but he fumbled it _again_ and it clattered across the floor. He just wasn’t cut out for knives, he supposed; he could handle an angel blade just fine, could shank a demon through its heart when the blade came sliding out of his sleeve or a pocket, but he couldn’t get the stupid flipping motion right, and apparently he’d spent millennia holding the damn weapon wrong anyway. Dean didn’t stop running—he didn’t believe in stopping just because Cas screwed up, because “in a real fight, you have to know how to defend yourself even if you drop your weapon”— so Cas lunged across the floor, grabbed his weapon, and tried to hold the knife the way Dean had taught him, with the blade facing outward and the tip away from his body.

          Dean tackled him and they rolled over the recently mat-covered floor, each trying to get the upper hand, but they had both had a lot of experience stopping sharp objects from plunging into their bodies, so neither was winning. Eventually, Cas managed to pin Dean’s wrist into the floor, effectively stopping the hand wielding the weapon, and sat on top of him, his fake knife touching his neck. He smiled brilliantly and said, “I believe I win, right?”

          Dean grinned flippantly. “Yeah, you win. Now get the hell off of me.”

          Cas didn’t move. He was staring blankly at Dean again, and refused to shift when Dean prodded him experimentally.

          “Cas?”

          “Can you teach me something else, Dean?” asked Cas distantly, but something decidedly wicked shined underneath his carefully expressionless visage. “I just have one question,” he continued, shifting slightly on top of Dean, sliding down from where he’d been sitting on his stomach. He started to shift his hips questioningly, wonderingly, like he was trying to imitate something he’d seen but had never tried.

          “…is this what you were doing before?”

          “Cas—”

          Castiel dropped his knife finally and leaned over Dean ominously, a powerful figure despite his mortality. “I believe you owe me,” he said quietly, roughly. “We were interrupted at the lake.”

          Dean groaned heavily and tried not to fidget too much under Castiel, but it was too late, and Cas knew it was working. Dean’s head hit the floor, and his hands snaked up from where they had been collapsed at his sides. Castiel released the wrist he had had pinned underneath his hand, and Dean moved both hands to Cas’s waist, which he was still moving slowly and experimentally.

          “God damn it, Cas,” Dean hissed. Castiel watched him in amusement for a few seconds before leaning over even more, so that their chests pressed together, and kissing the side of Dean’s jaw. Dean moaned again and gave in, starting to shift his hips in tandem to Cas’s.

          “God damn it, Cas,” he repeated, less unhappily, and he pressed both his hands to either side of Cas’s face so that he could properly guide their lips together.

          Cas still had his knees on either side of Dean’s waist, anchoring them in that position so that Dean couldn’t flip them. Castiel let one hand fall into its usual spot on top of Dean’s head, knotted in his hair, but the other he wrapped around Dean’s shoulder, over cloth and skin and scar.

          Dean had moved his hands away from Cas’s face; one was trailing lazy patterns up and down his side, and the other was on the back of his neck. Despite the sweet, undemanding placements of their hands, the aggressive movements of their hips rubbed their dicks together through their jeans. Dean growled—a rough, barbaric noise that Cas swallowed gratefully—and tried to roll them over, but Castiel would not relent; instead, he took the hand pressing into Dean’s scar and trailed it lightly down his arm, then over the skin just above the waistband on his jeans. Luckily, as Cas was sitting on top of him, he only had to lean back slightly in order to fumble his fingers over the buttons on Dean’s jeans, and they could continue the friction that their hips were creating against each other. After a minute’s attempting—undoing jeans one-handed while one’s mouth, dick, and other hand were all extremely busy was a difficult business—Cas managed to undo Dean’s jeans properly. He had just enough time to shove his hand down Dean’s pants and wrap it around his dick before somebody coughed and a really loud voice near-shouted,

          “What the hell are you two doing?”

          And yeah, Sam sounded more amused than anything else, but Dean’s still didn’t really like the idea that his little brother had just walked in on him rutting against their best friend on the floor of the practice room, with said best friend’s hand down his pants and a few new hickeys on both of their necks.

          Castiel withdrew his hand and sat up primly, sliding off Dean as he did so. Dean wasn’t sure which was worse: Castiel continuing to sit on top of him during this conversation, or the fact that the entire room could now see his raging boner. Castiel certainly played nonchalance well, for all that he had major sex hair and obviously just-kissed lips and the fact Dean had managed to undo a few buttons on his shirt.

          “Cas, can you leave us alone for a minute?” asked Dean in a hard voice, and Castiel threw him an irritated glare before pushing past Sam and disappearing into his room.

          An awkward silence fell. Finally, Sam cleared his throat and said,

          “So—he any good?”

          He let Dean splutter for about ten seconds before he amended, “At _sparring_ , you disgusting freak.”

          “Bitch.”

          “Jerk.”

          Sam continued to look at him almost accusatorily, and finally, after shifting uncomfortably in the silence for a minute or two, Dean snapped, “What?”

          “Nothing. Want to tell me what’s been happening?”

          Dean opened his mouth, then looked down at himself and flushed. He was kind of a mess. “Give me ten minutes.”

          Sam froze for a second, then pulled a bitchface. “That’s disgusting.”

 

“So…you and Cas?”

          “Do we _really_ have to talk about this?” asked Dean almost before he’d finished speaking.

          “Dean, you can’t keep bottling everything up. You’ll get hurt, or he will. And it’s _Cas_.”

          “Exactly,” said Dean, hands clenching on top of the table in the Research Room. “It’s…well, it’s a little weird, isn’t it?”

          Sam sighed exasperatedly. “Why are you getting so worked up about this?”

          Dean paused. “Because it’s _Cas_.”

          Sam raised his eyebrows. “You’re an idiot.” He ignored Dean’s _excuse me?_ and plowed on, “Do you really think you can—can keep on making out with him in closets and then pushing him away? I’ve seen what you’ve been doing, Dean, and you can’t act like that with him. He’s struggling with his mortality, and probably with his feelings for you, and now you’re screwed-up attitude. You can’t do this to him.”

          Dean looked away because he didn’t have an answer. Sam leaned forward, his mouth a thin line of mixed commiseration and frustration, and clapped Dean on the shoulder. He used his brother to help heave himself off his chair, and said,

          “Listen, Dean…you’re my brother and I want you to be happy. And if Cas makes you happy…then the only one standing in your way is, as usual, you.”

          Dean hadn’t yet figured out the correct response when Sam walked away. He grumbled under his breath for a bit before moving to grab a sandwich and a beer.

 

That night, Cas laid in his bed as usual, staring at the ceiling and thinking. Sleep _should_ be easy, but it somehow wasn’t. Newborns needed time to figure out the best position and what to think about and that you shouldn’t move or sing under your breath or think too hard or about something frustrating. Cas needed time to figure all this out, too.

          He was deep in contemplation of his fellow angels’ whereabouts and states of mind (Were they upset? Angry? Coping? Vengeful? Content?) when a soft knock sounded on his door. Cas always slept with his door locked as an added precaution, because he felt fairly vulnerable in his human state, so at this disturbance to the usual quietness of the late-night bunker, he slid the army knife out from underneath his pillow, flipped it open, and cautiously approached the entrance to his room. He twisted the knob and brandished the knife, and the figure on the other side leapt backwards so that his back was pressed against the wall on the other side of the hallway.

          “Woah, Cas, relax. It’s me,” came Dean’s voice from the black shape shifting in the hallway, and Cas exhaled and threw his knife back onto his bed.

          “What are you doing here, Dean?” he asked unhappily, stepping back into his room so that Dean could follow him inside. He did, and Cas shut the door and stepped back to his bed. He turned his back to his visitor, busily stowing the weapon back under his pillow and fussily rearranging his sheets from where he had kicked them in one of his failed attempts to sleep.

          “I want to talk to you,” said Dean, sounding uncomfortable, though Cas still couldn’t see his face with the lack of light in the room.

          “About what? Do you really want to speak with me, or do you want to touch me and leave me again?”

          Dean closed his eyes wearily, his self-hatred growing. “I want to talk to you, Cas! I know I’ve been a huge dick lately, but I—I was dealing with—”

          “You were _dealing_ with things?” Castiel cut in scathingly, suddenly very close. “You don’t get to talk about _dealing_ with things, Dean. You’re always _dealing_ with something. I was there for you when you went to Hell; I rebelled for you; I put myself in mortal danger for you, over and over; I saved you in Purgatory, and again, and I’ve _been_ saving you since we met—but when I fell, who was there for me? I lost my _Grace_. I lost my _family_. They—they hate me now; you met Charlotte. And you—you’re _dealing with some things_?”

          Dean had stepped back warily from this tirade, his arms coming up slightly as though to guard his face and his body. “You know I didn’t mean that, Cas. I—” He shook his head sullenly. “You’re right. I should have been there for you. I wasn’t, and I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

          “I’m glad that you’re sorry, Dean. It means you’re growing.” He turned away. Dean couldn’t tell if this was sarcasm or not.

          “So—a-are we good?”

          Castiel turned slightly, and Dean could see his silhouette. “We’re good, Dean. Now, I should get to sleep—”

          “You weren’t sleeping?” Dean cut in, worry lines creasing his forehead as they always did whenever Cas revealed that he wasn’t adapting to an aspect of humanity. Cas cast him an appraising look and shook his head. Dean raised his eyebrows at him and, instead of leaving, moved around to the side of the bed that Cas hadn’t been occupying. He looked at Castiel for a long moment, until Cas relented and sat down on his bed, legs crossed and eyes fixated on Dean’s face.

          Dean slid underneath the sheets and flipped up Cas’s side, arching an eyebrow at him and saying, “Well, come on. I’ll help you sleep.”

          Cas looked at him guardedly for another long moment before relenting. He sat up very straight, the covers thrown over his legs, his back flat against the headboard, the pillow providing little cushioning to his lower back. His eyes had adjusted, and he properly saw Dean’s amused smirk as he slid down so that his head rested against the pillow and he was looking up at Cas.

          “What are you waiting for?” he asked quietly, opening his arms slightly in an invitation that Cas was free to decline.

          He didn’t. After a second’s hesitation, he slid carefully down on the bed, then shifted into the circle that Dean’s arms offered. Dean scoffed, “Dude, what are you doing? Your shoulder’s poking my chest. Turn over.”

          Cas turned the opposite way from what Dean had meant, so that they were facing each other, but neither of them said anything. Dean fully closed his arms so that Cas was trapped there, but not in a bad way. Dean shifted slightly and so did Cas, pressing his face into the hollow of Dean’s neck and locking his arms around his waist for good measure. He closed his eyes and really tried to sleep, but Dean was _hugging him_ and he smelled like musk and gun powder and whatever conditioner he used, and before Cas really realized what he was doing, he was pressing little kisses along the underside of Dean’s jaw, where his stubble was growing. He could feel Dean shaking with laughter under him, but he didn’t stop until Dean said, “You’re not sleeping.”

          Cas lifted his mouth long enough to agree, “No,” before returning to the task at hand.

          Dean rolled them over softly so that Cas’s back hit the mattress. He pinned his arms down and whispered, “You have to sleep, Cas.”

          “I don’t want to sleep. I want to kiss you,” he answered matter-of-factly.

          Dean sucked in a breath. “Cas—”

          “Are you ashamed to want me, Dean?”

          He froze completely. “What?”

          “Don’t act stupid, Dean. Is that why you keep running? You’re upset that you want me.”

          He immediately pulled Cas against his chest, rolling them back onto their sides.

          “I’m not ashamed of you, Cas. I swear. I—I know I’ve been a dick lately, but that’s over. Alright? I…I’m sorry, Cas. I really am.”

          He didn’t know what this meant, not for them or for the future, but an apology was sufficient for tonight. Cas wrapped his arms around Dean’s back again and pulled himself up to kiss him lightly on the lips.

          “I forgive you,” he said, though the words got muffled when Dean brought their mouths crashing back together again, his hand wrapping in the hair at the back of his ex-angel’s head, his other grabbing his waist to pull him closer. Cas responded enthusiastically, one hand pressing against his left shoulder, the other wrapped around a bicep. After about a minute, Cas rolled them over so that he was on top of Dean, but at this change of position Dean seemed to come back to himself. Chuckling, he pulled his mouth free and shoved Cas back onto his side, then immediately grabbed him and pulled him back into a sort of embrace, so that they both lay on their sides, Cas’s back pressed to Dean’s chest. He moved his head close enough so that Cas’s hair tickled his lips slightly.

          “Goodnight, Cas,” whispered Dean, closing his eyes.

          “Goodnight, Dean,” returned the other, and right before he attempted sleep once more, he felt Dean grab of his hands and entwine their fingers. He buried his smile into the pillow they were sharing and closed his eyes.

 

Sam’s coughing from next door was so loud the next morning that both of them woke up. They had shifted in the night; Castiel was back on his side of the bed, his arm slung over the edge, and Dean was on his stomach, one arm slung out so that it rested not so much over Cas’s side as straight over his ass.

          Castiel opened his eyes blearily, turning his head to face Dean, who woke up seconds later and smiled slightly, shutting them again.

          “Morning, Cas.”

          “Good morning,” yawned Cas, sitting up so that Dean’s arm fell off him. He grunted from his prone position, and Cas stared at him. “Is that what you would call ‘a good night’s sleep’?”

          Dean laughed and pushed himself to a seated position. “Yeah, Cas. That was a good night.”

          Cas smiled and stood, stretching, and Dean tried and failed not to look at the little strip of skin that was revealed with this simple motion. Although, he supposed he was now entitled to these little treasures.

          “Who’s making breakfast?” asked Dean in reference to the clear smell of food permeating the bunker. He hauled himself to his feet as well. Castiel just frowned like he didn’t know either, and they went outside to investigate.

          Kevin, of course, was standing at the stove. As they entered the kitchen, he flipped the last piece of bacon onto a plate and turned to face them, immediately taking in the distance between them, which was even more minimal than usual.

          “Have a good night, you guys?” he asked, pushing past them to put the food on the table.

          “Shut up,” grumbled Dean, sitting down heavily and piling some food onto his plate.

          Sam stumbled in about ten minutes after Cas and Dean. Breakfast was quiet; everyone seemed aware that Dean had spent the night in Cas’s bed, though neither Sam nor Kevin seemed prepared to accept that nothing unsavory had gone on if their constant stream of subtle sex jokes were anything to go by. Dean didn’t react to any of them, mainly because they seemed to be going over Cas’s head, and he didn’t want to upset him.

          “You wanna shut up?” he mumbled fiercely when he and Sam got up to clear the plates. Sam just smirked at him. Dean supposed that after years of giving Sam shit, he deserved this, but he still didn’t like it.

          The two of them had just returned to the table when a loud knock sounded from outside the bunker. They all jumped and looked nervously in the direction of the entrance, which they couldn’t see from the kitchen. Dean’s hand jumped to where his gun would be in his normal attire, and he cursed himself that he had stopped arming himself around their hideout.

          The doorknob rattled like someone was testing it out, but they had resumed locking the door regularly after Castiel’s return. Finally, after exchanging several uneasy glances, Dean got up to answer the door. He grabbed a kitchen knife on the way out of the room. Sam and Cas looked at each other one more time before getting up and following. Kevin trailed a few steps behind.

          “What the hell?” Dean said loudly from the other room, and the three of them darted into the next doorway just in time for someone to shove viciously past them and collapse on the couch. Dean appeared moments later, mouthing wordlessly, and they all looked at each other in guarded confusion before stepping forward to peer over the back of the couch at the heaving, coughing, heavily-breathing, layers-clad figure dirtying their living room furniture.

          Sam’s eyebrows shot into his hair and he turned to look confusedly at Dean, who was as yet unable to form words as he stared at the person. Cas’s brow furrowed, and the expression on his face looked apprehensive, unhappy, terrified even—but not confused. Kevin looked between the three of them, who all clearly knew this man that he decidedly did not. He peered over the back of the couch again, where the man had quickly fallen unconscious. Kevin turned back to the others and said, “Who the hell is he?”

          Dean raised his eyebrows at Sam, silently wondering who should inform the prophet, but Castiel reacted first. He inclined his head slightly toward the man on the sofa and said, in his usual rumbling, gravelly voice, “This is Sam and Dean’s half-brother. Adam Milligan.”


End file.
